The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe | Page 9

for all, and much more, if we hoped to maintain our possession of the
island, as shall be seen in the course of that story.
I had not such bad luck in this voyage as I had been used to meet with,
and therefore shall have the less occasion to interrupt the reader, who
perhaps may be impatient to hear how matters went with my colony;
yet some odd accidents, cross winds and bad weather happened on this
first setting out, which made the voyage longer than I expected it at
first; and I, who had never made but one voyage, my first voyage to
Guinea, in which I might be said to come back again, as the voyage
was at first designed, began to think the same ill fate attended me, and
that I was born to be never contented with being on shore, and yet to be
always unfortunate at sea. Contrary winds first put us to the northward,
and we were obliged to put in at Galway, in Ireland, where we lay
wind-bound two-and-twenty days; but we had this satisfaction with the
disaster, that provisions were here exceeding cheap, and in the utmost
plenty; so that while we lay here we never touched the ship's stores, but
rather added to them. Here, also, I took in several live hogs, and two
cows with their calves, which I resolved, if I had a good passage, to put
on shore in my island; but we found occasion to dispose otherwise of
them.
We set out on the 5th of February from Ireland, and had a very fair gale
of wind for some days. As I remember, it might be about the 20th of
February in the evening late, when the mate, having the watch, came

into the round-house and told us he saw a flash of fire, and heard a gun
fired; and while he was telling us of it, a boy came in and told us the
boatswain heard another. This made us all run out upon the
quarter-deck, where for a while we heard nothing; but in a few minutes
we saw a very great light, and found that there was some very terrible
fire at a distance; immediately we had recourse to our reckonings, in
which we all agreed that there could be no land that way in which the
fire showed itself, no, not for five hundred leagues, for it appeared at
WNW. Upon this, we concluded it must be some ship on fire at sea;
and as, by our hearing the noise of guns just before, we concluded that
it could not be far off, we stood directly towards it, and were presently
satisfied we should discover it, because the further we sailed, the
greater the light appeared; though, the weather being hazy, we could
not perceive anything but the light for a while. In about half-an-hour's
sailing, the wind being fair for us, though not much of it, and the
weather clearing up a little, we could plainly discern that it was a great
ship on fire in the middle of the sea.
I was most sensibly touched with this disaster, though not at all
acquainted with the persons engaged in it; I presently recollected my
former circumstances, and what condition I was in when taken up by
the Portuguese captain; and how much more deplorable the
circumstances of the poor creatures belonging to that ship must be, if
they had no other ship in company with them. Upon this I immediately
ordered that five guns should be fired, one soon after another, that, if
possible, we might give notice to them that there was help for them at
hand and that they might endeavour to save themselves in their boat;
for though we could see the flames of the ship, yet they, it being night,
could see nothing of us.
We lay by some time upon this, only driving as the burning ship drove,
waiting for daylight; when, on a sudden, to our great terror, though we
had reason to expect it, the ship blew up in the air; and in a few minutes
all the fire was out, that is to say, the rest of the ship sunk. This was a
terrible, and indeed an afflicting sight, for the sake of the poor men,
who, I concluded, must be either all destroyed in the ship, or be in the
utmost distress in their boat, in the middle of the ocean; which, at

present, as it was dark, I could not see. However, to direct them as well
as I could, I caused lights to be hung out in all parts of the ship where
we could, and which we had lanterns for, and kept firing guns all the
night long, letting them know