After sitting awhile longer, and musing what I should do in this case, I was not able to bear sitting in ignorance longer; so setting up my ladder to the side of the hill, where there was a flat place, as I observed before, and then pulling the ladder up after me, I set it up again, and mounted to the top of the hill; and pulling out my perspective glass, which I had taken on purpose, I laid me down flat on my belly on the ground, and began to look for the place. I presently found there were no less than nine naked savages sitting round a small fire they had made; not to warm them, for they had no need of that, the weather being extreme hot; but, as I supposed, to dress some of their barbarous diet of human flesh which they had brought with them, whether alive or dead I could not know.
They had two canoes with them, which they had haled up upon the shore; and as it was then tide of ebb, they seemed to me to wait the return of the flood to go away again. It is not easy to imagine what confusion this sight put me into, especially seeing them come on my side the island, and so near me too; but when I observed their coming must be always with the current of the ebb, I began afterwards to be more sedate in my mind, being satisfied that I might go abroad with safety all the time of tide of flood, if they were not on shore before; and having made this observation, I went abroad about my harvest work with the more composure.
As I expected, so it proved; for as soon as the tide made to the westward, I saw them all take boat, and row (or paddle, as we call it) all away: I should have observed, that for an hour and more before they went off, they went to dancing, and I could easily discern their postures and gestures by my glasses; I could only perceive, by my nicest observation, that they were stark naked, and had not the least covering upon them; but whether they were men or women, that I could not distinguish.
As soon as I saw them shipped and gone, I took two guns upon my shoulders, and two pistols at my girdle, and my great sword by my side, without a scabbard; and with all the speed I was able to make, I went away to the hill, where I had discovered the first appearance of all. As soon as I got thither, which was not less than two hours, (for I could not go apace, being so loaded with arms as I was,) I perceived there had been three canoes more of savages on that place; and looking out further, I saw they were all at sea together, making over for the main.
This was a dreadful sight to me, especially when, going down to the shore, I could see the marks of horror which the dismal work they had been about had left behind it, viz. the blood, the bones, and part of the flesh of human bodies, eaten and devoured by those wretches with merriment and sport. I was so filled with indignation at the sight, that I began now to premeditate the destruction of the next that I saw there, let them be who or how many soever.
It seemed evident to me, that the visits which they thus made to this island were not very frequent; for it was above fifteen months before any more of them came on shore there again; that is to say, I never saw them, or any footsteps or signals of them, in all that time; for as to the rainy seasons, then they are sure not to come abroad, at least not so far; yet all this while I lived uncomfortably, by reason of the constant apprehensions I was in of their coming upon me by surprise; from whence I observe, that the expectation of evil is more bitter than the suffering, especially if there is no room to shake off that expectation or those apprehensions.
During all this time, I was in the murdering humour; and took up most of my hours, which should have been better employed, in contriving how to circumvent and fall upon them the very next time I should see them; especially if they should be divided, as they were the last time, into two parties; nor did I consider at all, that if I killed one party, suppose ten or a dozen, I was still the next day, or week, or month, to kill another, and so another, even ad infinitum, till I should be at length no less a murderer than they were in being men-eaters, and perhaps much more so.
I spent my days now in great perplexity and anxiety of mind, expecting that I should one day or other fall into the hands of those merciless creatures; if I did at any time venture abroad, it was not without looking round me with the greatest care and caution imaginable; and now I found, to my great comfort, how happy it was that I had provided a tame flock or herd of goats; for I durst not, upon any account, fire my gun especially near that side of the island, where they usually came, lest I should alarm the savages; and if they had fled from me now, I was sure to have them come back again, with perhaps two or three hundred canoes with them in a few days, and then I knew what to expect.
However, I wore out a year and three months more before I ever saw any more of the savages, and then I found them again, as I shall soon observe. It is true, they might have been there once or twice, but either they made no stay, or, at least, I did not hear them; but in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four-and-twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them, of which in its place.
The perturbation of my mind, during this fifteen or sixteen months interval, was very great; I slept unquiet, dreamed always frightful dreams, and often started out of my sleep in the night; in the day great troubles overwhelmed my mind; in the night I dreamed often of killing the savages, and the reasons why I might justify the doing of it. But to wave all this for awhile, it was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calendar would reckon, for I marked all upon, the post still; I say, it was on the sixteenth of May that it blew a great storm of wind all day, with a great deal of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night was after it: I know not what was the particular occasion of it; but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as I thought, fired at sea.