Robinson Crusoe

A CAVE RETREAT

While this was doing, I was not altogether careless of my other
affairs; for I had a great concern upon me for my little herd of goats:
they were not only a ready supply to me on every occasion, and began to
be sufficient for me, without the expense of powder and shot, but also
without the fatigue of hunting after the wild ones; and I was loath to
lose the advantage of them, and to have them all to nurse up over
again.

For this purpose, after long consideration, I could think of but two
ways to preserve them: one was, to find another convenient place to dig
a cave underground, and to drive them into it every night; and the
other was to enclose two or three little bits of land, remote from one
another, and as much concealed as I could, where I might keep about
half-a-dozen young goats in each place; so that if any disaster
happened to the flock in general, I might be able to raise them again
with little trouble and time: and this though it would require a good
deal of time and labour, I thought was the most rational design.

Accordingly, I spent some time to find out the most retired parts of
the island; and I pitched upon one, which was as private, indeed, as my
heart could wish: it was a little damp piece of ground in the middle of
the hollow and thick woods, where, as is observed, I almost lost myself
once before, endeavouring to come back that way from the eastern part
of the island. Here I found a clear piece of land, near three acres, so
surrounded with woods that it was almost an enclosure by nature; at
least, it did not want near so much labour to make it so as the other
piece of ground I had worked so hard at.

I immediately went to work with this piece of ground; and in less than
a month’s time I had so fenced it round that my flock, or herd, call it
which you please, which were not so wild now as at first they might be
supposed to be, were well enough secured in it: so, without any further
delay, I removed ten young she-goats and two he-goats to this piece,
and when they were there I continued to perfect the fence till I had
made it as secure as the other; which, however, I did at more leisure,
and it took me up more time by a great deal. All this labour I was at
the expense of, purely from my apprehensions on account of the print of
a man’s foot; for as yet I had never seen any human creature come near
the island; and I had now lived two years under this uneasiness, which,
indeed, made my life much less comfortable than it was before, as may
be well imagined by any who know what it is to live in the constant
snare of the fear of man. And this I must observe, with grief, too,
that the discomposure of my mind had great impression also upon the
religious part of my thoughts; for the dread and terror of falling into
the hands of savages and cannibals lay so upon my spirits, that I
seldom found myself in a due temper for application to my Maker; at
least, not with the sedate calmness and resignation of soul which I was
wont to do: I rather prayed to God as under great affliction and
pressure of mind, surrounded with danger, and in expectation every
night of being murdered and devoured before morning; and I must
testify, from my experience, that a temper of peace, thankfulness,
love, and affection, is much the more proper frame for prayer than that
of terror and discomposure: and that under the dread of mischief
impending, a man is no more fit for a comforting performance of the
duty of praying to God than he is for a repentance on a sick-bed; for
these discomposures affect the mind, as the others do the body; and the
discomposure of the mind must necessarily be as great a disability as
that of the body, and much greater; praying to God being properly an
act of the mind, not of the body.

But to go on. After I had thus secured one part of my little living
stock, I went about the whole island, searching for another private
place to make such another deposit; when, wandering more to the west
point of the island than I had ever done yet, and looking out to sea, I
thought I saw a boat upon the sea, at a great distance. I had found a
perspective glass or two in one of the seamen’s chests, which I saved
out of our ship, but I had it not about me; and this was so remote that
I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it till my eyes
were not able to hold to look any longer; whether it was a boat or not
I do not know, but as I descended from the hill I could see no more of
it, so I gave it over; only I resolved to go no more out without a
perspective glass in my pocket. When I was come down the hill to the
end of the island, where, indeed, I had never been before, I was
presently convinced that the seeing the print of a man’s foot was not
such a strange thing in the island as I imagined: and but that it was a
special providence that I was cast upon the side of the island where
the savages never came, I should easily have known that nothing was
more frequent than for the canoes from the main, when they happened to
be a little too far out at sea, to shoot over to that side of the
island for harbour: likewise, as they often met and fought in their
canoes, the victors, having taken any prisoners, would bring them over
to this shore, where, according to their dreadful customs, being all
cannibals, they would kill and eat them; of which hereafter.

When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the
SW. point of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is
it possible for me to express the horror of my mind at seeing the shore
spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and
particularly I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a
circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where I supposed the savage
wretches had sat down to their human feastings upon the bodies of their
fellow-creatures.

I was so astonished with the sight of these things, that I entertained
no notions of any danger to myself from it for a long while: all my
apprehensions were buried in the thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman,
hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of human nature,
which, though I had heard of it often, yet I never had so near a view
of before; in short, I turned away my face from the horrid spectacle;
my stomach grew sick, and I was just at the point of fainting, when
nature discharged the disorder from my stomach; and having vomited with
uncommon violence, I was a little relieved, but could not bear to stay
in the place a moment; so I got up the hill again with all the speed I
could, and walked on towards my own habitation.

When I came a little out of that part of the island I stood still
awhile, as amazed, and then, recovering myself, I looked up with the
utmost affection of my soul, and, with a flood of tears in my eyes,
gave God thanks, that had cast my first lot in a part of the world
where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these; and
that, though I had esteemed my present condition very miserable, had
yet given me so many comforts in it that I had still more to give
thanks for than to complain of: and this, above all, that I had, even
in this miserable condition, been comforted with the knowledge of
Himself, and the hope of His blessing: which was a felicity more than
sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which I had suffered, or
could suffer.

In this frame of thankfulness I went home to my castle, and began to be
much easier now, as to the safety of my circumstances, than ever I was
before: for I observed that these wretches never came to this island in
search of what they could get; perhaps not seeking, not wanting, or not
expecting anything here; and having often, no doubt, been up the
covered, woody part of it without finding anything to their purpose. I
knew I had been here now almost eighteen years, and never saw the least
footsteps of human creature there before; and I might be eighteen years
more as entirely concealed as I was now, if I did not discover myself
to them, which I had no manner of occasion to do; it being my only
business to keep myself entirely concealed where I was, unless I found
a better sort of creatures than cannibals to make myself known to. Yet
I entertained such an abhorrence of the savage wretches that I have
been speaking of, and of the wretched, inhuman custom of their
devouring and eating one another up, that I continued pensive and sad,
and kept close within my own circle for almost two years after this:
when I say my own circle, I mean by it my three plantations—viz. my
castle, my country seat (which I called my bower), and my enclosure in
the woods: nor did I look after this for any other use than an
enclosure for my goats; for the aversion which nature gave me to these
hellish wretches was such, that I was as fearful of seeing them as of
seeing the devil himself. I did not so much as go to look after my boat
all this time, but began rather to think of making another; for I could
not think of ever making any more attempts to bring the other boat
round the island to me, lest I should meet with some of these creatures
at sea; in which case, if I had happened to have fallen into their
hands, I knew what would have been my lot.

Time, however, and the satisfaction I had that I was in no danger of
being discovered by these people, began to wear off my uneasiness about
them; and I began to live just in the same composed manner as before,
only with this difference, that I used more caution, and kept my eyes
more about me than I did before, lest I should happen to be seen by any
of them; and particularly, I was more cautious of firing my gun, lest
any of them, being on the island, should happen to hear it. It was,
therefore, a very good providence to me that I had furnished myself
with a tame breed of goats, and that I had no need to hunt any more
about the woods, or shoot at them; and if I did catch any of them after
this, it was by traps and snares, as I had done before; so that for two
years after this I believe I never fired my gun once off, though I
never went out without it; and what was more, as I had saved three
pistols out of the ship, I always carried them out with me, or at least
two of them, sticking them in my goat-skin belt. I also furbished up
one of the great cutlasses that I had out of the ship, and made me a
belt to hang it on also; so that I was now a most formidable fellow to
look at when I went abroad, if you add to the former description of
myself the particular of two pistols, and a broadsword hanging at my
side in a belt, but without a scabbard.

Things going on thus, as I have said, for some time, I seemed,
excepting these cautions, to be reduced to my former calm, sedate way
of living. All these things tended to show me more and more how far my
condition was from being miserable, compared to some others; nay, to
many other particulars of life which it might have pleased God to have
made my lot. It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would
be among mankind at any condition of life if people would rather
compare their condition with those that were worse, in order to be
thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to
assist their murmurings and complainings.

As in my present condition there were not really many things which I
wanted, so indeed I thought that the frights I had been in about these
savage wretches, and the concern I had been in for my own preservation,
had taken off the edge of my invention, for my own conveniences; and I
had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon, and
that was to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and
then try to brew myself some beer. This was really a whimsical thought,
and I reproved myself often for the simplicity of it: for I presently
saw there would be the want of several things necessary to the making
my beer that it would be impossible for me to supply; as, first, casks
to preserve it in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already,
I could never compass: no, though I spent not only many days, but
weeks, nay months, in attempting it, but to no purpose. In the next
place, I had no hops to make it keep, no yeast to make it work, no
copper or kettle to make it boil; and yet with all these things
wanting, I verily believe, had not the frights and terrors I was in
about the savages intervened, I had undertaken it, and perhaps brought
it to pass too; for I seldom gave anything over without accomplishing
it, when once I had it in my head to began it. But my invention now ran
quite another way; for night and day I could think of nothing but how I
might destroy some of the monsters in their cruel, bloody
entertainment, and if possible save the victim they should bring hither
to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is
intended to be to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather
brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at
least frightening them so as to prevent their coming hither any more:
but all this was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect,
unless I was to be there to do it myself: and what could one man do
among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them
together with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they
could shoot as true to a mark as I could with my gun?

Sometimes I thought of digging a hole under the place where they made
their fire, and putting in five or six pounds of gunpowder, which, when
they kindled their fire, would consequently take fire, and blow up all
that was near it: but as, in the first place, I should be unwilling to
waste so much powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity
of one barrel, so neither could I be sure of its going off at any
certain time, when it might surprise them; and, at best, that it would
do little more than just blow the fire about their ears and fright
them, but not sufficient to make them forsake the place: so I laid it
aside; and then proposed that I would place myself in ambush in some
convenient place, with my three guns all double-loaded, and in the
middle of their bloody ceremony let fly at them, when I should be sure
to kill or wound perhaps two or three at every shot; and then falling
in upon them with my three pistols and my sword, I made no doubt but
that, if there were twenty, I should kill them all. This fancy pleased
my thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often
dreamed of it, and, sometimes, that I was just going to let fly at them
in my sleep. I went so far with it in my imagination that I employed
myself several days to find out proper places to put myself in
ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them, and I went frequently to the
place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; but while my
mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge and a bloody putting
twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the horror I
had at the place, and at the signals of the barbarous wretches
devouring one another, abetted my malice. Well, at length I found a
place in the side of the hill where I was satisfied I might securely
wait till I saw any of their boats coming; and might then, even before
they would be ready to come on shore, convey myself unseen into some
thickets of trees, in one of which there was a hollow large enough to
conceal me entirely; and there I might sit and observe all their bloody
doings, and take my full aim at their heads, when they were so close
together as that it would be next to impossible that I should miss my
shot, or that I could fail wounding three or four of them at the first
shot. In this place, then, I resolved to fulfil my design; and
accordingly I prepared two muskets and my ordinary fowling-piece. The
two muskets I loaded with a brace of slugs each, and four or five
smaller bullets, about the size of pistol bullets; and the
fowling-piece I loaded with near a handful of swan-shot of the largest
size; I also loaded my pistols with about four bullets each; and, in
this posture, well provided with ammunition for a second and third
charge, I prepared myself for my expedition.

After I had thus laid the scheme of my design, and in my imagination
put it in practice, I continually made my tour every morning to the top
of the hill, which was from my castle, as I called it, about three
miles or more, to see if I could observe any boats upon the sea, coming
near the island, or standing over towards it; but I began to tire of
this hard duty, after I had for two or three months constantly kept my
watch, but came always back without any discovery; there having not, in
all that time, been the least appearance, not only on or near the
shore, but on the whole ocean, so far as my eye or glass could reach
every way.

As long as I kept my daily tour to the hill, to look out, so long also
I kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the
while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution as the killing
twenty or thirty naked savages, for an offence which I had not at all
entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my
passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural
custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered
by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other
guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and
consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act
such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but
nature, entirely abandoned by Heaven, and actuated by some hellish
degeneracy, could have run them into. But now, when, as I have said, I
began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long
and so far every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself
began to alter; and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to
consider what I was going to engage in; what authority or call I had to
pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom
Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on,
and to be as it were the executioners of His judgments one upon
another; how far these people were offenders against me, and what right
I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood which they shed
promiscuously upon one another. I debated this very often with myself
thus: “How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case?
It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not
against their own consciences reproving, or their light reproaching
them; they do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in
defiance of divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit.
They think it no more a crime to kill a captive taken in war than we do
to kill an ox; or to eat human flesh than we do to eat mutton.”

When I considered this a little, it followed necessarily that I was
certainly in the wrong; that these people were not murderers, in the
sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts, any more than
those Christians were murderers who often put to death the prisoners
taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole
troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw
down their arms and submitted. In the next place, it occurred to me
that although the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and
inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me: these people had done me no
injury: that if they attempted, or I saw it necessary, for my immediate
preservation, to fall upon them, something might be said for it: but
that I was yet out of their power, and they really had no knowledge of
me, and consequently no design upon me; and therefore it could not be
just for me to fall upon them; that this would justify the conduct of
the Spaniards in all their barbarities practised in America, where they
destroyed millions of these people; who, however they were idolators
and barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous rites in their
customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet, as
to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out
of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation
by even the Spaniards themselves at this time, and by all other
Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural
piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and for which the
very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to
all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of
Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who
were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to
the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the
mind.

These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full
stop; and I began by little and little to be off my design, and to
conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolution to attack the
savages; and that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless
they first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to
prevent: but that, if I were discovered and attacked by them, I knew my
duty. On the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was the
way not to deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for
unless I was sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at
that time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of
them escaped to tell their country-people what had happened, they would
come over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows, and
I should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which, at
present, I had no manner of occasion for. Upon the whole, I concluded
that I ought, neither in principle nor in policy, one way or other, to
concern myself in this affair: that my business was, by all possible
means to conceal myself from them, and not to leave the least sign for
them to guess by that there were any living creatures upon the island—I
mean of human shape. Religion joined in with this prudential
resolution; and I was convinced now, many ways, that I was perfectly
out of my duty when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the
destruction of innocent creatures—I mean innocent as to me. As to the
crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do
with them; they were national, and I ought to leave them to the justice
of God, who is the Governor of nations, and knows how, by national
punishments, to make a just retribution for national offences, and to
bring public judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by
such ways as best please Him. This appeared so clear to me now, that
nothing was a greater satisfaction to me than that I had not been
suffered to do a thing which I now saw so much reason to believe would
have been no less a sin than that of wilful murder if I had committed
it; and I gave most humble thanks on my knees to God, that He had thus
delivered me from blood-guiltiness; beseeching Him to grant me the
protection of His providence, that I might not fall into the hands of
the barbarians, or that I might not lay my hands upon them, unless I
had a more clear call from Heaven to do it, in defence of my own life.

In this disposition I continued for near a year after this; and so far
was I from desiring an occasion for falling upon these wretches, that
in all that time I never once went up the hill to see whether there
were any of them in sight, or to know whether any of them had been on
shore there or not, that I might not be tempted to renew any of my
contrivances against them, or be provoked by any advantage that might
present itself to fall upon them; only this I did: I went and removed
my boat, which I had on the other side of the island, and carried it
down to the east end of the whole island, where I ran it into a little
cove, which I found under some high rocks, and where I knew, by reason
of the currents, the savages durst not, at least would not, come with
their boats upon any account whatever. With my boat I carried away
everything that I had left there belonging to her, though not necessary
for the bare going thither—viz. a mast and sail which I had made for
her, and a thing like an anchor, but which, indeed, could not be called
either anchor or grapnel; however, it was the best I could make of its
kind: all these I removed, that there might not be the least shadow for
discovery, or appearance of any boat, or of any human habitation upon
the island. Besides this, I kept myself, as I said, more retired than
ever, and seldom went from my cell except upon my constant employment,
to milk my she-goats, and manage my little flock in the wood, which, as
it was quite on the other part of the island, was out of danger; for
certain, it is that these savage people, who sometimes haunted this
island, never came with any thoughts of finding anything here, and
consequently never wandered off from the coast, and I doubt not but
they might have been several times on shore after my apprehensions of
them had made me cautious, as well as before. Indeed, I looked back
with some horror upon the thoughts of what my condition would have been
if I had chopped upon them and been discovered before that; when, naked
and unarmed, except with one gun, and that loaded often only with small
shot, I walked everywhere, peeping and peering about the island, to see
what I could get; what a surprise should I have been in if, when I
discovered the print of a man’s foot, I had, instead of that, seen
fifteen or twenty savages, and found them pursuing me, and by the
swiftness of their running no possibility of my escaping them! The
thoughts of this sometimes sank my very soul within me, and distressed
my mind so much that I could not soon recover it, to think what I
should have done, and how I should not only have been unable to resist
them, but even should not have had presence of mind enough to do what I
might have done; much less what now, after so much consideration and
preparation, I might be able to do. Indeed, after serious thinking of
these things, I would be melancholy, and sometimes it would last a
great while; but I resolved it all at last into thankfulness to that
Providence which had delivered me from so many unseen dangers, and had
kept me from those mischiefs which I could have no way been the agent
in delivering myself from, because I had not the least notion of any
such thing depending, or the least supposition of its being possible.
This renewed a contemplation which often had come into my thoughts in
former times, when first I began to see the merciful dispositions of
Heaven, in the dangers we run through in this life; how wonderfully we
are delivered when we know nothing of it; how, when we are in a
quandary as we call it, a doubt or hesitation whether to go this way or
that way, a secret hint shall direct us this way, when we intended to
go that way: nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business
has called us to go the other way, yet a strange impression upon the
mind, from we know not what springs, and by we know not what power,
shall overrule us to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear that
had we gone that way, which we should have gone, and even to our
imagination ought to have gone, we should have been ruined and lost.
Upon these and many like reflections I afterwards made it a certain
rule with me, that whenever I found those secret hints or pressings of
mind to doing or not doing anything that presented, or going this way
or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate; though I knew
no other reason for it than such a pressure or such a hint hung upon my
mind. I could give many examples of the success of this conduct in the
course of my life, but more especially in the latter part of my
inhabiting this unhappy island; besides many occasions which it is very
likely I might have taken notice of, if I had seen with the same eyes
then that I see with now. But it is never too late to be wise; and I
cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended with
such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so
extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let
them come from what invisible intelligence they will. That I shall not
discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but certainly they are a proof
of the converse of spirits, and a secret communication between those
embodied and those unembodied, and such a proof as can never be
withstood; of which I shall have occasion to give some remarkable
instances in the remainder of my solitary residence in this dismal
place.

I believe the reader of this will not think it strange if I confess
that these anxieties, these constant dangers I lived in, and the
concern that was now upon me, put an end to all invention, and to all
the contrivances that I had laid for my future accommodations and
conveniences. I had the care of my safety more now upon my hands than
that of my food. I cared not to drive a nail, or chop a stick of wood
now, for fear the noise I might make should be heard: much less would I
fire a gun for the same reason: and above all I was intolerably uneasy
at making any fire, lest the smoke, which is visible at a great
distance in the day, should betray me. For this reason, I removed that
part of my business which required fire, such as burning of pots and
pipes, &c., into my new apartment in the woods; where, after I had been
some time, I found, to my unspeakable consolation, a mere natural cave
in the earth, which went in a vast way, and where, I daresay, no
savage, had he been at the mouth of it, would be so hardy as to venture
in; nor, indeed, would any man else, but one who, like me, wanted
nothing so much as a safe retreat.

The mouth of this hollow was at the bottom of a great rock, where, by
mere accident (I would say, if I did not see abundant reason to ascribe
all such things now to Providence), I was cutting down some thick
branches of trees to make charcoal; and before I go on I must observe
the reason of my making this charcoal, which was this—I was afraid of
making a smoke about my habitation, as I said before; and yet I could
not live there without baking my bread, cooking my meat, &c.; so I
contrived to burn some wood here, as I had seen done in England, under
turf, till it became chark or dry coal: and then putting the fire out,
I preserved the coal to carry home, and perform the other services for
which fire was wanting, without danger of smoke. But this is
by-the-bye. While I was cutting down some wood here, I perceived that,
behind a very thick branch of low brushwood or underwood, there was a
kind of hollow place: I was curious to look in it; and getting with
difficulty into the mouth of it, I found it was pretty large, that is
to say, sufficient for me to stand upright in it, and perhaps another
with me: but I must confess to you that I made more haste out than I
did in, when looking farther into the place, and which was perfectly
dark, I saw two broad shining eyes of some creature, whether devil or
man I knew not, which twinkled like two stars; the dim light from the
cave’s mouth shining directly in, and making the reflection. However,
after some pause I recovered myself, and began to call myself a
thousand fools, and to think that he that was afraid to see the devil
was not fit to live twenty years in an island all alone; and that I
might well think there was nothing in this cave that was more frightful
than myself. Upon this, plucking up my courage, I took up a firebrand,
and in I rushed again, with the stick flaming in my hand: I had not
gone three steps in before I was almost as frightened as before; for I
heard a very loud sigh, like that of a man in some pain, and it was
followed by a broken noise, as of words half expressed, and then a deep
sigh again. I stepped back, and was indeed struck with such a surprise
that it put me into a cold sweat, and if I had had a hat on my head, I
will not answer for it that my hair might not have lifted it off. But
still plucking up my spirits as well as I could, and encouraging myself
a little with considering that the power and presence of God was
everywhere, and was able to protect me, I stepped forward again, and by
the light of the firebrand, holding it up a little over my head, I saw
lying on the ground a monstrous, frightful old he-goat, just making his
will, as we say, and gasping for life, and, dying, indeed, of mere old
age. I stirred him a little to see if I could get him out, and he
essayed to get up, but was not able to raise himself; and I thought
with myself he might even lie there—for if he had frightened me, so he
would certainly fright any of the savages, if any of them should be so
hardy as to come in there while he had any life in him.

I was now recovered from my surprise, and began to look round me, when
I found the cave was but very small—that is to say, it might be about
twelve feet over, but in no manner of shape, neither round nor square,
no hands having ever been employed in making it but those of mere
Nature. I observed also that there was a place at the farther side of
it that went in further, but was so low that it required me to creep
upon my hands and knees to go into it, and whither it went I knew not;
so, having no candle, I gave it over for that time, but resolved to go
again the next day provided with candles and a tinder-box, which I had
made of the lock of one of the muskets, with some wildfire in the pan.

Accordingly, the next day I came provided with six large candles of my
own making (for I made very good candles now of goat’s tallow, but was
hard set for candle-wick, using sometimes rags or rope-yarn, and
sometimes the dried rind of a weed like nettles); and going into this
low place I was obliged to creep upon all-fours as I have said, almost
ten yards—which, by the way, I thought was a venture bold enough,
considering that I knew not how far it might go, nor what was beyond
it. When I had got through the strait, I found the roof rose higher up,
I believe near twenty feet; but never was such a glorious sight seen in
the island, I daresay, as it was to look round the sides and roof of
this vault or cave—the wall reflected a hundred thousand lights to me
from my two candles. What it was in the rock—whether diamonds or any
other precious stones, or gold which I rather supposed it to be—I knew
not. The place I was in was a most delightful cavity, or grotto, though
perfectly dark; the floor was dry and level, and had a sort of a small
loose gravel upon it, so that there was no nauseous or venomous
creature to be seen, neither was there any damp or wet on the sides or
roof. The only difficulty in it was the entrance—which, however, as it
was a place of security, and such a retreat as I wanted; I thought was
a convenience; so that I was really rejoiced at the discovery, and
resolved, without any delay, to bring some of those things which I was
most anxious about to this place: particularly, I resolved to bring
hither my magazine of powder, and all my spare arms—viz. two
fowling-pieces—for I had three in all—and three muskets—for of them I
had eight in all; so I kept in my castle only five, which stood ready
mounted like pieces of cannon on my outmost fence, and were ready also
to take out upon any expedition. Upon this occasion of removing my
ammunition I happened to open the barrel of powder which I took up out
of the sea, and which had been wet, and I found that the water had
penetrated about three or four inches into the powder on every side,
which caking and growing hard, had preserved the inside like a kernel
in the shell, so that I had near sixty pounds of very good powder in
the centre of the cask. This was a very agreeable discovery to me at
that time; so I carried all away thither, never keeping above two or
three pounds of powder with me in my castle, for fear of a surprise of
any kind; I also carried thither all the lead I had left for bullets.

I fancied myself now like one of the ancient giants who were said to
live in caves and holes in the rocks, where none could come at them;
for I persuaded myself, while I was here, that if five hundred savages
were to hunt me, they could never find me out—or if they did, they
would not venture to attack me here. The old goat whom I found expiring
died in the mouth of the cave the next day after I made this discovery;
and I found it much easier to dig a great hole there, and throw him in
and cover him with earth, than to drag him out; so I interred him
there, to prevent offence to my nose.