Daniel Defoe

“ For sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first.
I walked about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance; making a thousand gestures and motions, which I cannot describe; reflecting upon my comrades that were drowned, and that there should not be one soul saved but myself; for, as for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them, except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows. ”

“ In all the time of my solitary life, I never felt so earnest, so strong a desire after the society of my fellow-creatures, or so deep a regret at the want of it.
There are some secret moving springs in the affections, which, when they are set a going by some object in view, or, though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul, by its impetuosity, to such violent, eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable. ”

“ When I was on the desperate expedition on the desert shores of Africa, I never had so much as one thought of what would become of me; or one wish to God to direct me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages: but I was quite thoughtless of a God or a Providence; acted like a mere brute, from the principles of nature, and by the dictates of common sense only ”

“ One day, walking up the same hill, but the weather being hazy at sea, so that we could not see the continent, I called to him, and said, "Friday, do not you wish yourself in your own country, your own nation?"—"Yes," he said, "I be much O glad to be at my own nation." "What would you do there?" said I: "would you turn wild again, eat men's flesh again, and be a savage as you were before?" ”

“ When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the S.W. 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 cock-pit, where I supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their inhuman feastings upon the bodies of their fellow creatures. ”

“ 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 every where, 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! ”

“ While I was in view of the Moor that was swimming, I stood out directly to sea with the boat, rather stretching to windward, that they might think me gone towards the Straits' mouth; (as indeed any one that had been in their wits must have been supposed to do) for who would have supposed we were sailed on to the southward to the truly Barbarian coast, where whole nations of Negroes were sure to surround us with the canoes, and destroy us; where we could never once go on shore but we should be devoured by savage beasts, or more merciless savages of human kind? ”

“ I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked, during a dreadful storm, in the offing, came on shore on this dismal unfortunate island, which I called the ISLAND OF DESPAIR; all the rest of the ship's company being drowned, and myself almost dead.
All the rest of that day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought to, viz. I had neither food, house, clothes, weapon, nor place to fly to: and, in despair of any relief, saw nothing but death before me; that I should either be devoured by wild beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food. ”

“ My second cargo was a great bag of rice, the umbrella to set up over my head for a shade, another large pot of fresh water, and about two dozen of my small loaves, or barley-cakes, more than before, with a bottle of goat's milk and a cheese: all which, with great labour and sweat, I carried to my boat; and praying to God to direct my voyage, I put out; and rowing, or paddling, the canoe along the shore, came at last to the utmost point of the island on the north-east side. And now I was to launch out into the ocean, and either to venture or not to venture. ”

“ At which he smiled, and said, "Yes, yes, we always fight the better:" that is, he meant, always get the better in fight; and so we began the following discourse:
Master. You always fight the better; how came you to be taken prisoner then, Friday?
Friday. My nation beat much for all that.
Master. How beat? If your nation beat them, how came you to be taken?
Friday. They more many than my nation in the place where me was; they take one, two, three, and me: my nation over-beat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there my nation take one, two, great thousand. ”

“ As I had once done thus in breaking away from my parents, so I could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulph of human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent with life, and a state of health in the world. ”

“ The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the anniversary of my landing on the island; having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments for the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. ”

“ I had, alas! no divine knowledge: what I had received by the good instruction of my father was then worn out, by an uninterrupted series, for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation with none but such as were, like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree. I do not remember that I had, in all that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking upward towards God, or inward towards a reflection upon my own ways: but a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or consciousness of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me ”

“ I told him with freedom, I feared mostly their treachery and ill usage of me, if I put my life in their hands; for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man, nor did men always square their dealings by the obligations they had received, so much as they did by the advantages they expected. I told him it would be very hard that I should be the instrument of their deliverance, and that they should afterwards make me their prisoner in New Spain, where an Englishman was certain to be made a sacrifice, what necessity, or what accident soever brought him thither ”

“ So void was I of every thing that was good, or of the least sense of what I was, or was to be, that in the greatest deliverances I enjoyed (such as my escape from Sallee, my being taken up by the Portuguese master of a ship, my being planted so well in the Brazils, my receiving the cargo from England, and the like,) I never had once the words, Thank God, so much as on my mind, or in my mouth; nor in the greatest distress had I so much as a thought to pray to him, or so much as to say, Lord, have mercy upon me! ”

“ The tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections; and sometimes I would expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin its creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable; so abandoned without help, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life. ”

“ By this time it blew a terrible storm indeed; and now I began to see terror and amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The master, though vigilant in the business of preserving the ship, yet as he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly say to himself several times, "Lord, be merciful to us! we shall be all lost; we shall be all undone!" ”

“ But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisure view of the miseries of death came to place itself before me; when my spirits began to sink under the burden of a strong distemper, and nature was exhausted with the violence of the fever; conscience, that had slept so long, began to awake; and I reproached myself with my past life, in which I had so evidently, by uncommon wickedness, provoked the justice of God to lay me under uncommon strokes, and to deal with me in so vindictive a manner. These reflections oppressed me for the second or third day of my distemper ”

“ As to making sail, we had none; nor, if we had, could we have done any thing with it; so we worked at the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came nearer to the shore, she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own hands, pulling as well as we could towards land.
What the shore was—whether rock or sand, whether steep or shoal—we knew not ”

“ Is it a real man or an angel?"—"Be in no fear about that, Sir," said I; "if God had sent an angel to relieve you, he would have come better clothed, and armed after another manner than you see me: pray lay aside your fears; I am a man, an Englishman, and disposed to assist you: you see I have one servant only; we have arms and ammunition; tell us freely, can we serve you? What is your case?"—"Our case," said he, "Sir, is too long to tell you, while our murderers are so near us; but, in short, Sir, I was commander of that ship, my men have mutinied against me ”

“ 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 every where, and was able to protect me, upon this 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 most monstrous, frightful, old he-goat just making his will, as we say, and gasping for life; and dying, indeed, of mere old age. ”

“ All this labour I was at the expense of, purely from my apprehensions on the account of the print of a man's foot which I had seen; for, as yet, I never saw 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. ”

“ It was now harvest, and our crop in good order: it was not the most plentiful increase I had seen in the island, but, however, it was enough to answer our end; for from twenty-two bushels of barley we brought in and threshed out above two hundred and twenty bushels, and the like in proportion of the rice; which was store enough for our food to the next harvest, though all the sixteen Spaniards had been on shore with me; or if we had been ready for a voyage, it would very plentifully have victualled our ship to have carried us to any part of the world, that is to say, any part of America. ”

“ I inquired if he could tell me how I might go from this island and get among those white men; he told me, Yes, yes, you may go in two canoe. I could not understand what he meant, or make him describe to me what he meant by two canoe; till, at last, with great difficulty, I found he meant it must be in a large boat, as big as two canoes. This part of Friday's discourse began to relish with me very well; and from this time I entertained some hopes that, one time or other, I might find an opportunity to make my escape from this place, and that this poor savage might be a means to help me. ”