part where the English traded, I should find some of their
vessels upon their usual design of trade, that would relieve
and take us in.
By the best of my calculation, that place where I now
was must be that country which, lying between the Em-
peror of Morocco’s dominions and the negroes, lies waste
and uninhabited, except by wild beasts; the negroes having
abandoned it and gone farther south for fear of the Moors,
and the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting by reason
of its barrenness; and indeed, both forsaking it because of
the prodigious number of tigers, lions, leopards, and other
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furious creatures which harbour there; so that the Moors
use it for their hunting only, where they go like an army,
two or three thousand men at a time; and indeed for near a
hundred miles together upon this coast we saw nothing but
a waste, uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing but
howlings and roaring of wild beasts by night.
Once or twice in the daytime I thought I saw the Pico of
Teneriffe, being the high top of the Mountain Teneriffe in
the Canaries, and had a great mind to venture out, in hopes
of reaching thither; but having tried twice, I was forced in
again by contrary winds, the sea also going too high for my
little vessel; so, I resolved to pursue my first design, and
keep along the shore.
Several times I was obliged to land for fresh water, after
we had left this place; and once in particular, being early in
morning, we came to an anchor under a little point of land,
which was pretty high; and the tide beginning to flow, we
lay still to go farther in. Xury, whose eyes were more about
him than it seems mine were, calls softly to me, and tells me
that we had best go farther off the shore; ‘For,’ says he, ‘look,
yonder lies a dreadful monster on the side of that hillock,
fast asleep.’ I looked where he pointed, and saw a dreadful
monster indeed, for it was a terrible, great lion that lay on
the side of the shore, under the shade of a piece of the hill
that hung as it were a little over him. ‘Xury,’ says I, ‘you
shall on shore and kill him.’ Xury, looked frighted, and said,
‘Me kill! he eat me at one mouth!’ - one mouthful he meant.
However, I said no more to the boy, but bade him lie still,
and I took our biggest gun, which was almost musket-bore,
Robinson Crusoe
and loaded it with a good charge of powder, and with two
slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another gun with two
bullets; and the third (for we had three pieces) I loaded with
five smaller bullets. I took the best aim I could with the first
piece to have shot him in the head, but he lay so with his
leg raised a little above his nose, that the slugs hit his leg
about the knee and broke the bone. He started up, growling
at first, but finding his leg broken, fell down again; and then
got upon three legs, and gave the most hideous roar that
ever I heard. I was a little surprised that I had not hit him on
the head; however, I took up the second piece immediately,
and though he began to move off, fired again, and shot him
in the head, and had the pleasure to see him drop and make
but little noise, but lie struggling for life. Then Xury took
heart, and would have me let him go on shore. ‘Well, go,’
said I: so the boy jumped into the water and taking a little
gun in one hand, swam to shore with the other hand, and
coming close to the creature, put the muzzle of the piece to
his ear, and shot him in the head again, which despatched
him quite.
This was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and
I was very sorry to lose three charges of powder and shot
upon a creature that was good for nothing to us. However,
Xury said he would have some of him; so he comes on board,
and asked me to give him the hatchet. ‘For what, Xury?’ said
I. ‘Me cut off his head,’ said he. However, Xury could not cut
off his head, but he cut off a foot, and brought it with him,
and it was a monstrous great one.
I bethought myself, however, that, perhaps the skin of
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him might, one way or other, be of some value to us; and I
resolved to take off his skin if I could. So Xury and I went
to work with him; but Xury was much the better workman
at it, for I knew very ill how to do it. Indeed, it took us both
up the whole day, but at last we got off the hide of him, and
spreading it on the top of our cabin, the sun effectually
dried it in two days’ time, and it afterwards served me to
lie upon.
Robinson Crusoe
CHAPTER III - WRECKED
ON A DESERT ISLAND
AFTER this stop, we made on to the southward continu-
ally for ten or twelve days, living very sparingly on our
provisions, which began to abate very much, and going no
oftener to the shore than we were obliged to for fresh water.
My design in this was to make the river Gambia or Senegal,
that is to say anywhere about the Cape de Verde, where I
was in hopes to meet with some European ship; and if I did
not, I knew not what course I had to take, but to seek for the
islands, or perish there among the negroes. I knew that all
the ships from Europe, which sailed either to the coast of
Guinea or to Brazil, or to the East Indies, made this cape, or
those islands; and, in a word, I put the whole of my fortune
upon this single point, either that I must meet with some
ship or must perish.
When I had pursued this resolution about ten days lon-
ger, as I have said, I began to see that the land was inhabited;
and in two or three places, as we sailed by, we saw people
stand upon the shore to look at us; we could also perceive
they were quite black and naked. I was once inclined to
have gone on shore to them; but Xury was my better coun-
sellor, and said to me, ‘No go, no go.’ However, I hauled in
nearer the shore that I might talk to them, and I found they
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ran along the shore by me a good way. I observed they had
no weapons in their hand, except one, who had a long slen-
der stick, which Xury said was a lance, and that they could
throw them a great way with good aim; so I kept at a dis-
tance, but talked with them by signs as well as I could; and
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