Robinson Crusoe, Told to the Children by John Lang

by Daniel Defoe

All forenoon Robinson watched, and when the hottest time of the day had come, he noticed the sailors throw themselves down under the trees, and go to sleep, some distance away from the three prisoners.

Then Robinson and Friday, taking their muskets and pistols, stole down cautiously behind the three men, to try to speak to them without the others knowing.

Robinson had put on his goat-skin coat and the great hairy hat that he had made for himself; and with his cutlass and pistols in his belt, and a gun over each shoulder, he looked very fierce.

The men did not see him till he spoke, and they were so startled by his wild look, and by the sight of two men armed to the teeth, that they nearly ran away. But Robinson told them not to be alarmed; he was an Englishman, and a friend, and would help them if they would show him how it could be done.

Then they explained to him what had happened. One of the three was Captain of the ship that lay at anchor off the island. Of the others, one was mate of the ship, and the third man was a passenger. The crew had mutinied, the Captain told Robinson, and had put him and the other two in irons, and the ring-leaders in the mutiny had proposed to kill them. Now they meant to leave them on the island to perish.

The Captain was so astonished at finding anybody there who proposed to help him, that he said in his wonder: ‘Am I talking to a man, or to an angel from heaven?’

‘If the Lord had sent an angel, sir,’ said Robinson, ‘he would probably have come better clothed.’

Then he asked if the boat’s crew had any firearms, and was told that they had only two muskets, one of which was left in the boat. ‘The rest should be easy, then,’ Robinson said; ‘we can either kill them all, or take them prisoners, as we please.’

The Captain was unwilling to see the men killed, for he said if two of the worst of them were got rid of, he believed the rest would return to their duty.

Robinson made a bargain that if he saved the Captain from the mutineers, and recovered the ship, he and Friday were to be taken home to England in her, free of cost; and to this the Captain and the others agreed.