Robinson Crusoe, Told to the Children by John Lang

by Daniel Defoe

This seemed so simple and easy that he determined to risk it next day. Sleeping that night in the canoe, early in the morning he started, and in little more than two hours safely reached the wreck, without any trouble.

She was a pitiful sight,—Spanish, he judged, from her build. She was lying on the reef, jammed fast between two rocks, the after part of her all stove in by the sea. Her main and foremasts had gone over the side when she struck, and hung about the wreck in a tangle of rigging and spars. Her bulwarks, and rails, and the poop ladders, were all gone, and part of one boat still hung on the davits, torn away by the furious sea before the crew could attempt to lower it. On board, there was no living thing except a dog, which yelped when it saw Robinson coming, and jumped into the sea, and swam eagerly to him when he spoke to it. Poor beast! It was almost dead from thirst. Robinson gave it water, and food, and it drank till he was almost afraid it might burst itself.

After this, Robinson boarded the wreck, and the first thing he saw was two men lying in the cook’s galley, dead, held fast in each other’s arms. Beyond this, there was no trace of any human being, and the cargo, whatever it might have been, had mostly been washed out of the wreck by the sea. There were still a few casks of brandy, or wine, low down in the bold, but they were too heavy for Robinson to move.

Some chests there were in the forecastle, which most likely had belonged to some of the crew. Two of these Robinson got into his boat, along with a small cask of liquor, and other things; a powder-horn full of powder, a fire-shovel and tongs (which he had always much needed), two little brass kettles, a copper pot, and a gridiron. These, and the dog, were all that he got from the wreck. The dog was a great comfort to him, for the animal he had brought ashore from his own ship had now been dead many years.

Except what he found in the seamen’s chests, there was nothing of value in the cargo he brought ashore. In the chests were many things that he prized, linen shirts, handkerchiefs, and coloured neckcloths, pots of sweetmeats, a case of bottles of cordial waters, very handsomely mounted with silver, and, what then was of less value to him, three great bags of gold pieces, besides gold doubloons, and bars of gold. But all this gold he would gladly have given then for a few pairs of English shoes and stockings, for it was of no use at all to him on the island. However, he stowed all the money and the gold in his cave, along with the other things, and then returned and worked his boat along shore to the harbour where he had kept her so long.

But the sight of the wrecked ship and the drowned men had filled him again with the longing to go away, and if he had had as good a boat as that in which he escaped from the pirates, he thought that he would have waited no longer on the island, but would have put to sea in her, and taken his chance of reaching some land where white men dwelt. With the frail craft that he had, however, such a plan was not possible, and he had no choice but to go on living as he had already so long lived, all the time in daily fear of a raid by the savages.

And yet, at times, when his spirits were more than usually low, when the burden of the lonely years pressed most heavily upon him, Robinson used to think that surely if the savages could come to his land, he could go to theirs. How far did they come? Where was their country? What kind of boats had they? And so eager to go was he sometimes, that he forgot to think of what he would do when he got there, or what would become of him if he fell into the hands of the savages. His mind was utterly taken up with the one thought of getting to the mainland, and even his dreams were of little else.

The harbour where he had kept his boat so long

One night, when he had put himself almost into a fever with the trouble of his mind, he had lain long awake, tossing and moaning, but at last he had fallen asleep. And he dreamed, not as he had usually done of late, that he was sailing to the mainland, but that as he was leaving his castle in the morning he saw on the shore two canoes and eleven savages landing, and that they had with them another man, whom they were just about to kill and eat, when suddenly the prisoner jumped up and ran for his life. And in his dream Robinson fancied that the man came running to hide in the thicket round the castle, and that thereupon he went out to help him. Then in the dream, the savage kneeled down, as if begging for mercy, and Robinson took him over the ladder into the castle, saying to himself, ‘Now that I’ve got this fellow, I can certainly go to the mainland, for he will show me what course to steer, and where to go when we land.’ And he woke, with the joyful feeling that now at last all was well. But when he was wide awake, and knew that it was only a dream after all, poor Robinson was more cast down than ever, and more unhappy than he had been during all the years he had lived on the island.