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Robinson Crusoe: Africa

Various were my adventures after that first tempestuous voyage. Trading to Guinea in Africa, I was captured by a Turkish rover and sold into slavery, from whence after many perils I escaped to the Brazils, where I set myself up for a sugar-planter and was enjoying a fine prosperity thereat, when I fell a victim to temptation. Help being scarce in the Brazils and some planters there knowing that I had traded with the slave coasts of Africa, they beguiled me into a voyage to those parts with the intent to secure slave labor for our plantations.

Only evil does ever come of evil counsel. Our ship was wrecked on an unknown island off the northeast coast of South America, and of all the ship's company I alone, by the blessing of God, was allowed to escape through the high surf to the shore. All I possessed at the time was a knife, a pipe, and a little tobacco in a box. Walking along the shore, when I had recovered sufficiently in strength so to walk, I found fresh water, a great joy. Having drunk and put a little tobacco against the hunger in my mouth, I took up my lodging in a tree and did there sleep, to my great refreshment, throughout the night. Next morning the weather was clear and the sea mild, but what pleased me most was the sight of the ship, which, as the tide ebbed, lay so close to the shore that I found no trouble in swimming out to it. No living thing except a dog and two cats was left on the ship; but there was a store of necessities, and such I took, building a raft for the purpose of transporting them to an inlet in the island where was fresh water and a flat, high place for my habitation. Bread, rice, barley and corn, cheese and dried goat's flesh, some sugar, flour, planks, spars, rope--all these with muskets, two pistols, fowling-pieces, a store of lead and powder, two saws, an ax, a hammer, and--which was the least use of all--thirty-six pounds sterling. All these I piloted from day to day between tides from ship to shore. On the night of the thirteenth day, my work of transportation being done, I lay down in my usual fear of wild beasts, but also of thankfulness in the knowledge that I was prepared for some time to come against the barrenness of this island. There were wild fruit trees on the island, but it was many days before I discovered them. There were also goats running wild, but without the firearms and ammunition I had brought from the ship, of what avail were they to me? So I had reason to be thankful for the good Providence which held the ship to the shore until I had taken off all that was of use to me. There was much to be done if I were to secure my existence on this strange island. The needful things I did as best I could in turn, but not always with good fortune attending my efforts. In my first planting of barley and corn seed, the half of all my precious stock was wasted by reason of being planted in the very wrong time. I spent weary months in making earthware pots for holding fresh water; and forty-two days it took me to hew my first long plank from a tree trunk. I strove for weeks to fashion a stone mortar to stamp grain in, only to come at last to a block of hollowed-out wood. Five months I labored in felling a great cedar-tree, hewing and shaping it to the hull of a splendid boat with which I was to escape from the island, only to be forced to abandon it for want of a means whereby to launch it into the sea. However, every failure taught me something I had not known before. For the elements, there were great winds and rains and earthquakes. But I became used in time to all things. I planted and harvested my crops of barley and corn; I plucked my wild grapes and dried them into nourishing raisins; I raised and killed and smoked and salted my tame goats, being thus for variety of food not so badly served. And so through the twelve years during which I saw no sign of human existence on the island other than my own, until that eventful day on which I met with the print of a man's naked foot on the sand. I was then like one thunderstruck. I listened, I looked, but I could hear nothing, see nothing. I went up the shore, down the shore; but there was only that single footprint! Terrified to the last degree, I ran to my habitation like one pursued; and for three days and nights thereafter I did not stir out. What a commentary on the fear of man for man! After twelve years of pain and labor, twelve years of warring against the elements, to be thrown into terror by the imprint of a human foot! But so it was.

After observation I learned that it was the habit of cannibals from the main land to come to a part of the island which I seldom visited to feast upon the bodies of their captured enemies. One morning from my lookout I perceived thirty savages dancing around a fire. They had cooked one victim and had two more ready for the fire, when I descended upon them with two loaded muskets and my great sword, and was in time to save one which they had not yet eaten. The saved man I called Friday, in honor of the day of his rescue, and his was the first voice I heard in all my twenty-five years on the island. He was young, intelligent, of a superior race of savages, and became my trusted companion for all the time I remained on the island. What Friday told me of the mainland, after I had taught him some English, decided me to leave my island. We built a boat, this time not too far from the sea for launching, and were almost ready to set sail when twenty-one savages in three canoes landed on the island with three prisoners for a feast. One of the prisoners was a white man, which enraged me. I double-charged two fowling-pieces, four muskets, two pistols, and, giving Friday a hatchet and also a great dram of rum, and myself my great sword, we descended and killed all but four savages.