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before,nor anything so regular and so handily built, at least of its kind;and one of them, when he saw it, after musing a good while, turningabout to me, "I am sure," says he, "that man has no need of us; youneed do nothing but give him tools."

　　But this was not all; for they did the same by all the ground tothe right hand and to the left, and round even to the side of thehill, leaving no way, not so much as for themselves, to come outbut by the ladder placed up to the side of the hill, and thenlifted up, and placed again from the first stage up to the top: sothat when the ladder was taken down, nothing but what had wings orwitchcraft to assist it could come at them. This was excellentlywell contrived: nor was it less than what they afterwards foundoccasion for, which served to convince me, that as human prudencehas the authority of Providence to justify it, so it has doubtlessthe direction of Providence to set it to work; and if we listenedcarefully to the voice of it, I am persuaded we might prevent manyof the disasters which our lives are now, by our own negligence,subjected to.

e fire, lay four menand three women, killed, and, as we thought, one or two more lay inthe heap among the fire; in short, there were such instances ofrage, altogether barbarous, and of a fury something beyond what washuman, that we thought it impossible our men could be guilty of it;or, if they were the authors of it, we thought they ought to beevery one of them put to the worst of deaths. But this was notall: we saw the fire increase forward, and the cry went on just asthe fire went on; so that we were in the utmost confusion. Weadvanced a little way farther, and behold, to our astonishment,three naked women, and crying in a most dreadful manner, cameflying as if they had wings, and after them sixteen or seventeenmen, natives, in the same terror and consternation, with three ofour English butchers in the rear, who, when they could not overtakethem, fired in among them, and one that was killed by their shotfell down in our sight. When the rest saw us, believing us to betheir enemies, and that we would mur

　　In its turn natural courage would sometimes take its place, andthen I would be talking myself up to vigorous resolutions; that Iwould not be taken to be barbarously used by a parcel of mercilesswretches in cold blood; that it were much better to have falleninto the hands of the savages, though I were sure they would feastupon me when they had taken me, than those who would perhaps gluttheir rage upon me by inhuman tortures and barbarities; that in thecase of the savages, I always resolved to die fighting to the lastgasp, and why should I not do so now? Whenever these thoughtsprevailed, I was sure to put myself into a kind of fever with theagitation of a supposed fight; my blood would boil, and my eyessparkle, as if I was engaged, and I always resolved to take noquarter at their hands; but even at last, if I could resist nolonger, I would blow up the ship and all that was in her, and leavethem but little booty to boast of.

　　This put me in mind of the life I lived in my kingdom, the island;where I suffered no more corn to grow, because I did not want it;and bred no more goats, because I had no more use for them; wherethe money lay in the drawer till it grew mouldy, and had scarce thefavour to be looked upon in twenty years. All these things, had Iimproved them as I ought to have done, and as reason and religionhad dictated to me, would have taught me to search farther thanhuman enjoyments for a full felicity; and that there was somethingwhich certainly was the reason and end of life superior to allthese things, and which was either to be possessed, or at leasthoped for, on this side of the grave.

　　When he was preparing to baptize her, I entreated him that he wouldperform that office with some caution, that the man might notperceive he was of the Roman Church, if possible, because of otherill consequences which might attend a difference among us in thatvery religion which we were instructing the other in. He told methat as he had no consecrated chapel, nor proper things for theoffice, I should see he would do it in a manner that I should notknow by it that he was a Roman Catholic myself, if I had not knownit before; and so he did; for saying only some words over tohimself in Latin, which I could not understand, he poured a wholedishful of water upon the woman's head, pronouncing in French, veryloud, "Mary" (which was the name her husband desired me to giveher, for I was her godfather), "I baptize thee in the name of theFather, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" so that none couldknow anything by it what religion he was of. He gave thebenediction afterwards in Latin, but either Will Atkins did n

crime, were the objects of divine vengeance, and bore theweight of that punishment."

　　But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unseenProvidence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon meinevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its consequences, into adeep relapse of the wandering disposition, which, as I may say,being born in my very blood, soon recovered its hold of me; and,like the returns of a violent distemper, came on with anirresistible force upon me. This blow was the loss of my wife. Itis not my business here to write an elegy upon my wife, give acharacter of her particular virtues, and make my court to the sexby the flattery of a funeral sermon. She was, in a few words, thestay of all my affairs; the centre of all my enterprises; theengine that, by her prudence, reduced me to that happy compass Iwas in, from the most extravagant and ruinous project that filledmy head, and did more to guide my rambling genius than a mother'stears, a father's instructions, a friend's counsel, or all my ownreasoning powers could do. I was happy in listening to her, and i