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第4章 组队

　　Then I brought them out all my store of tools, and gave every man adigging-spade, a shovel, and a rake, for we had no barrows orploughs; and to every separate place a pickaxe, a crow, a broadaxe, and a saw; always appointing, that as often as any were brokenor worn out, they should be supplied without grudging out of thegeneral stores that I left behind. Nails, staples, hinges,hammers, chisels, knives, scissors, and all sorts of ironwork, theyhad without reserve, as they required; for no man would take morethan he wanted, and he must be a fool that would waste or spoilthem on any account whatever; and for the use of the smith I lefttwo tons of unwrought iron for a supply.

　　At length they came in view of the place where the more miserableremains of the savages' army lay, where there appeared about ahundred still; their posture was generally sitting upon the ground,with their knees up towards their mouth, and the head put betweenthe two hands, leaning down upon the knees. When our men camewithin two musket-shots of them, the Spaniard governor ordered twomuskets to be fired without ball, to alarm them; this he did, thatby their countenance he might know what to expect, whether theywere still in heart to fight, or were so heartily beaten as to bediscouraged, and so he might manage accordingly. This stratagemtook: for as soon as the savages heard the first gun, and saw theflash of the second, they started up upon their feet in thegreatest consternation imaginable; and as our men advanced swiftlytowards them, they all ran screaming and yelling away, with a kindof howling noise, which our men did not understand, and had neverheard before; and thus they ran up the hills into the c

vest it in China silks, wrought and raw, he would be content togo to England, and then make a voyage back to Bengal by theCompany's ships.

　　While I was saying this, the man came whom he had sent back, andwith him eleven more. In the dress they were in it was impossibleto guess what nation they were of; but he made all clear, both tothem and to me. First, he turned to me, and pointing to them,said, "These, sir, are some of the gentlemen who owe their lives toyou;" and then turning to them, and pointing to me, he let themknow who I was; upon which they all came up, one by one, not as ifthey had been sailors, and ordinary fellows, and the like, butreally as if they had been ambassadors or noblemen, and I a monarchor great conqueror: their behaviour was, to the last degree,obliging and courteous, and yet mixed with a manly, majesticgravity, which very well became them; and, in short, they had somuch more manners than I, that I scarce knew how to receive theircivilities, much less how to return them in kind.

　　The Spaniards were in no small consternation at this sight; and, asthey found that the fellows went straggling all over the shore,they made no doubt but, first or last, some of them would chop inupon their habitation, or upon some other place where they wouldsee the token of inhabitants; and they were in great perplexityalso for fear of their flock of goats, which, if they should bedestroyed, would have been little less than starving them. So thefirst thing they resolved upon was to despatch three men awaybefore it was light, two Spaniards and one Englishman, to driveaway all the goats to the great valley where the cave was, and, ifneed were, to drive them into the very cave itself. Could theyhave seen the savages all together in one body, and at a distancefrom their canoes, they were resolved, if there had been a hundredof them, to attack them; but that could not be done, for they weresome of them two miles off from the other, and, as it appearedafterwards, were of two different nations.

　　In order to do this as intelligibly as I can, I must go back to thecircumstances in which I left the island, and the persons on it, ofwhom I am to speak. And first, it is necessary to repeat that Ihad sent away Friday's father and the Spaniard (the two whose livesI had rescued from the savages) in a large canoe to the main, as Ithen thought it, to fetch over the Spaniard's companions that heleft behind him, in order to save them from the like calamity thathe had been in, and in order to succour them for the present; andthat, if possible, we might together find some way for ourdeliverance afterwards. When I sent them away I had no visibleappearance of, or the least room to hope for, my own deliverance,any more than I had twenty years before - much less had I anyforeknowledge of what afterwards happened, I mean, of an Englishship coming on shore there to fetch me off; and it could not be buta very great surprise to them, when they came back, not only tofind that I was gone, but to find three strangers left

　　As we went on shore upon the tide of flood, near high water, werowed directly into the creek; and the first man I fixed my eyeupon was the Spaniard whose life I had saved, and whom I knew byhis face perfectly well: as to his habit, I shall describe itafterwards. I ordered nobody to go on shore at first but myself;but there was no keeping Friday in the boat, for the affectionatecreature had spied his father at a distance, a good way off theSpaniards, where, indeed, I saw nothing of him; and if they had notlet him go ashore, he would have jumped into the sea. He was nosooner on shore, but he flew away to his father like an arrow outof a bow. It would have made any man shed tears, in spite of thefirmest resolution, to have seen the first transports of this poorfellow's joy when he came to his father: how he embraced him,kissed him, stroked his face, took him up in his arms, set him downupon a tree, and lay down by him; then stood and looked at him, asany one would look at a strange picture, for a quarter

　　I consented to this readily, and went immediately on board, and thetwo men with me. As soon as I came to the ship's side, my partner,who was on board, came out on the quarter-deck, and called to me,with a great deal of joy, "We have stopped the leak - we havestopped the leak!" - "Say you so?" said I; "thank God; but weighanchor, then, immediately." - "Weigh!" says he; "what do you meanby that? What is the matter?" - "Ask no questions," said I; "butset all hands to work, and weigh without losing a minute." He wassurprised; however, he called the captain, and he immediatelyordered the anchor to be got up; and though the tide was not quitedown, yet a little land-breeze blowing, we stood out to sea. ThenI called him into the cabin, and told him the story; and we calledin the men, and they told us the rest of it; but as it took up agreat deal of time, before we had done a seaman comes to the cabindoor, and called out to us that the captain bade him tell us wewere chased by five sloops, or boats, full of men.

　　In pursuit of this odd sort of game it was our hap to meet withabout forty Tartars: whether they were hunting mutton, as we were,or whether they looked for another kind of prey, we know not; butas soon as they saw us, one of them blew a hideous blast on a kindof horn. This was to call their friends about them, and in lessthan ten minutes a troop of forty or fifty more appeared, at abouta mile distance; but our work was over first, as it happened.