This was her own relation, and is such a distinct account of starving to death as I confess I never met with, and was exceeding entertaining to me: I am the rather apt to believe it to be a true account, because the youth gave me an account of a good part of it; though I must own not so distinct and so feelingly as his maid, and the rather because it seems his mother fed him at the price of her own life: but the poor maid, though her constitution being stronger than that of her mistress, who was in years, and a weakly woman too, she might struggle harder with it; I say, the poor maid might be supposed to feel the extremity something sooner than her mistress, who might be allowed to keep the last bits something longer than she parted with any to relieve the maid. No question, as the case is here related, if our ship, or some other, had not so providentially met them, a few days more would have ended all their lives, unless they had prevented it by eating one another; and even that, as their case stood, would have served them but a little while, they being five hundred leagues from any land, or any possibility of relief, other than in the miraculous manner it happened.—But this is by the way; I return to my disposition of things among the people.
And first, it is to be observed here, that for many reasons I did not think fit to let them know any thing of the sloop I had framed, and which I thought of setting up among them; for I found, at least at my first coming, such seeds of division among them, that I saw it plainly, had I set up the sloop, and left it among them, they would, upon very light disgust, have separated, and gone away from one another; or perhaps have turned pirates, and so made the island a den of thieves, instead of a plantation of sober and religious people, as I intended it to be; nor did I leave the two pieces of brass cannon that I had on board, or the two quarter-deck guns, that my nephew took extraordinary, for the same reason: I thought they had enough to qualify them for a defensive war, against any that should invade them; but I was not to set them up for an offensive war, or to encourage them to go abroad to attack others, which, in the end, would only bring ruin and destruction upon themselves and all their undertakings: I reserved the sloop, therefore, and the guns, for their service another way, as I shall observe in its place.
I have now done with the island: I left them all in good circumstances, and in a flourishing condition, and went on board my ship again the fifth day of May, having been five and twenty days among them; and, as they were all resolved to stay upon the island till I came to remove them, I promised to send some further relief from the Brasils, if I could possibly find an opportunity; and particularly I promised to send them some cattle; such as sheep, hogs, and cows; for as to the two cows and calves which I brought from England, we had been obliged, by the length of our voyage, to kill them at sea, for want of hay to feed them.
The next day, giving them a salute of five guns at parting, we set sail, and arrived at the bay of All Saints, in the Brasils, in about twenty-two days; meeting nothing remarkable in our passage but this, that about three days after we sailed, being becalmed, and the current setting strong to the N.N.E. running, as it were, into a bay or gulf on the land side, we were driven something out of our course; and once or twice our men cried Land, to the westward; but whether it was the continent, or islands, we could not tell by any means.
But the third day, towards evening, the sea smooth and the weather calm, we saw the sea, as it were, covered towards the land, with something very black, not being able to discover what it was; but, after some time, our chief mate going up the main shrouds a little way, and looking at them with a perspective, cried out, it was an army. I could not imagine what he meant by an army, and spoke a little hastily, calling the fellow a fool, or some such word: “Nay, Sir,” says he, “don’t be angry, for it is an army, and a fleet too; for I believe there are a thousand canoes, and you may see them paddle along, and they are coming towards us too apace, and full of men.”
I was a little surprised then, indeed, and so was my nephew the captain; for he had heard such terrible stories of them in the island, and having never been in those seas before, that he could not tell what to think of it, but said two or three times, we should all be devoured. I must confess, considering we were becalmed, and the current set strong towards the shore, I liked it the worse; however, I bade him not be afraid, but bring the ship to an anchor, as soon as we came so near as to know that we must engage them.
The weather continued calm, and they came on apace towards us; so I gave orders to come to an anchor, and furl all our sails. As for the savages, I told them they had nothing to fear from them but fire; and therefore they should get their boats out, and fasten them, one close by the head, and the other by the stern, and man them both well, and wait the issue in that posture: this I did, that the men in the boats might be ready, with sheet and buckets, to put out any fire these savages might endeavour to fix upon the outside of the ship.
In this posture we lay by for them, and in a little while they came up with us; but never was such a horrid sight seen by Christians; my mate was much mistaken in his calculation of their number, I mean of a thousand canoes; the most we could make of them when they came up, being about 126; and a great many of them too; for some of them had sixteen or seventeen men in them, some more, and the least six or seven.
When they came nearer to us, they seemed to be struck with wonder and astonishment, as at a sight which they had, doubtless, never seen before; nor could they, at first, as we afterwards understood, know what to make of us. They came boldly up however, very near to us, and seemed to go about to row round us; but we called to our men in the boats not to let them come too near them. This very order brought us to an engagement with them, without our designing it; for five or six of the large canoes came so near our long-boat, that our men beckoned with their hands to keep them back, which they understood very well, and went back: but at their retreat about fifty arrows came on board us from those boats, and one of our men in the long-boat was very much wounded. However, I called to them not to fire by any means; but we handed down some deal boards into the boat, and the carpenter presently set up a kind of fence, like waste boards, to cover them from the arrows of the savages, if they should shoot again.
About half-an-hour afterwards they all came up in a body astern of us, and so near that we could easily discern what they were, though we could not tell their design; and I easily found they were some of my old friends, the same sort of savages that I had been used to engage with. In a short time more they rowed a little farther out to sea, till they came directly broadside with us, and then rowed down straight upon us, till they came so near that they could hear us speak; upon this, I ordered all my men to keep close, lest they should shoot any more arrows, and made all our guns ready; but being so near as to be within hearing, I made Friday go out upon the deck, and call out aloud to them in his language, to know what they meant. Whether they understood him or not, that I knew not; but as soon as he had called to them, six of them, who were in the foremost or nearest boat to us, turned their canoes from us, and stooping down, showed us their naked backs; whether this was a defiance or challenge we knew not, or whether it was done in mere contempt, or as a signal to the rest; but immediately Friday cried out they were going to shoot, and, unhappily for him, poor fellow, they let fly about three hundred of their arrows, and to my inexpressible grief, killed poor Friday, no other man being in their sight. The poor fellow was shot with no less than three arrows, and about three more fell very near him; such unlucky marksmen they were!