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I could calculate, and in my four and twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them; of which in its place.

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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; and in the night, I dreamed often of killing the savages, and of the reasons why I might justify the doing of it. But to wave all this for a while. It was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calend would reckon, for I marked all upon the post still; I say, it was on the sixteenth of May that it blew a very great storm of win all day, with a great deal of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night it was after it. I knew not what was the particular occasion of it, but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with very serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as I thought, fired at sea. This was, to be sure, a surprise quite of a different nature from any I had met with before; for the notions this put into my thoughts were quite of another kind. I started up in the greatest haste imaginable, and, in a trice clapped my ladder to the middle place of the rock, and pulled it after me; and mounting it the second time, got to the top of the hill the very moment that a flash of fire bid me listen for a second gun, which, accordingly, in about half a minute 1 neard; and, by the sound, knew that it was from that part of the sea where I was driven down the current in my boat. I immediately considered that this must be some ship in distress, and that they had some comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these guns for signals of distress, and to obtain help. I had the presence of mind, at that minute, to think, that though I could not help them, it might be they might help me so I brought together all the dry wood I could get at hand, and, making a good, handsome pile, I set it on fire upon the hill. The wood was dry, and blazed freely; and though the wind blew very hard, yet it burnt fairly out, so that was certain, if there was any such thing as a ship, they must needs see it, and no doubt they did; for as soon as ever my fire blazed up I heard another gun, and after that severa others, all from the same quarter. I plied my fire all nigh long, til daybreak; and when it was broad day, and the air cleared up, I saw something at a great distance at sea, full east of the island, whether a sail or a hull I could not distin guish, no, not win my glass; the distance was so great, and the weather still something hazy also; at least it was so out

at sea.

I looked frequently at it all that day, and soon perceived nat it did not move so I presently concluded that it was a ship at anchor; and being eager, you may be sure, to be satisfied, I took my gun in my hand, and ran towards the south side of

the island, to the rocks where I had formerly been carried away with the current; and getting up there, the weather by this time being perfectly clear, I could plainly see, to my great sorrow, the wreck of a ship, cast away in the night upon those concealed rocks which I found when I was out in my boat and which rocks, as they checked the violence of the stream, and made a kind of counter-stream, or eddy, were the occasion of my recovering from the most desperate, hopeless condition that ever I had been in, all my life. Thus, what is one man' safety is another man's destruction; for it seems these men, whoever they were, being out of their knowledge, and the rocks being wholly under water, had been driven upon them in the night, the wind blowing hard at E. N. E. Had they seen the island, as I must necessarily suppose they did not, they must, as I thought, have endeavored to have saved themselves on shore by the help of their boat; but their firing off guns for help, especially when they saw, as I imagined, my fire, filled me with many thoughts: first, I imagined that upon seeing my light, they might have put themselves into their boat, and endeavored to make the shore; but that the sea going very high, they might have been cast away: other times I imagined that they might have lost their boat before, as might be the case many ways; as, particularly, by the breaking of the sea upon their ship, which many times obliges men to stave, or take in pieces, their boat, and sometimes to throw it overboard with their own hands: other times I imagined they had some other ship or ships in company, who, upon the signals of distress they had made, had taken them up and carried them off; other times I fancied they were all gone off to sea in their boat, and being hurried away by the current that I had been formerly in, were carried out into the great ocean, where there was nothing but misery and perishing; and that, perhaps, they might by this time think of starving, and of being in a condition to eat one another.

As all these were but conjectures at best, so, in the condi tion I was in, I could do no more than look on upon the misery of the poor men, and pity them; which had still this good effect on my side, that it gave me more and more cause to give thanks to God, who had so happily and comfortably provided for me in my desolate condition; and that of two ships' companies who were now cast away upon this part of the world, not one life should be spared but mine. I learned here again to observe, that it is very rare that the providence of God casts us into any condition of life so low, or any misery so great, but we may see something or other to be thankful for, and

Such

may see others in worse circumstances than our own, certainly was the case of these men, of whom I could not so much as see room to suppose any of them were saved: nothing could make i rational so much as to wish or expect that they

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did not all perish there, except the possibility only of their being taken up by another ship in company; and this was but mere possibility indeed, for I saw not the least sign or ap pearance of any such thing. I cannot explain, by any pos sible energy of words, what a strange longing or hankering of desires I felt in my soul upon this sight, breaking out some. times thus: "O that there had been but one or two, nay, or but one soul, saved out of this ship, to have escaped to me, that I might but have had one companion, one fellow-creature to have spoken to me, and to have conversed with!" 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. Such were these ear nest wishings that but one man had been saved. I believe I repeated the words, "O that it had been but one!" a thousand times; and my desires were so moved by it, that when I spoke the words, my hands would clinch together, and my fingers would press the palms of my hands, so that if I had had any soft thing in my hand, it would have crushed it involuntarily; and the teeth in my head would strike together, and set against one another so strong, that for some time I could not part them again. Let the naturalists explain these things, and the reason and manner of them: all I can say to them is, to de scribe the fact, which was even surprising to me, when I found it, though I knew not from whence it proceeded it was doubtless the effect of ardent wishes, and of strong ideas formed in my mind, realizing the comfort which the conversation of one of my fellow Christians would have been to me. But it was not to be; either their fate or mine, or both, forbade it; for till the last year of my being on this island, I never knew whether any were saved out of that ship or no; and had only he affliction, some days after, to see the corpse of a drowned boy come on shore at the end of the island which was next the shipwreck. He had no clothes on but a seamen's waistcoat, a pair of open-kneed linen drawers, and a blue linen shirt; but nothing to direct me so much as to guess what nation he was of: he had nothing in his pockets but two pieces of eight and a tobacco-pipe;-the last was to me of ten times more value than the first.

It was now calm, and I had a great mind to venture out in iny boat to this wreck, not doubting but I might find some thing on board that might be useful to me: but that did not altogether press me so much as the possibility that there might

be yet some living creature on board, whose life I might not only save, but might, by saving that life, comfort my own to the last degree; and this thought clung so to my heart, that 1 could not be quiet night or day, but I must venture out in my boat on board this wreck; and committing the rest to God's providence, I thought the impression was so strong upon my mind that it could not be resisted, that it must come from some invisible direction, and that I should be wanting to myself if I did not go.

Under the power of this impression, I hastened back to my castle, prepared every thing for my voyage, took a quantity of bread, a great pot of fresh water, a compass to steer by, a bottle of rum (for I had still a great deal of that left), and a basket of raisins; and, thus loading myself with every thing necessary, I went down to my boat, got the water out of her, put her afloat, loaded all my cargo in her, and then went home again for more. 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 labor 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. I looked on the rapid currents which ran constantly on both sides of the island at a distance, and which were very terrible to me, from the remembrance of the hazard I had been in before, and my heart began to fail ne; for I foresaw that if I was driven into either of those cur rents, I should be carried a great way out to sea, and perhaps out of my reach, or sight of the island again; and that then, as my boat was but small, if any little gale of wind should rise, I should be inevitably lost.

These thoughts so oppressed my mind, that I began to give over my enterprise; and having hauled my boat into a little creek on the shore, I stepped out, and sat me down upon a rising bit of ground, very pensive and anxious, between fear and desire, about my voyage; when, as I was musing, I could, perceive that the tide was turned, and the flood come on; upon which my going was impracticable for so many hours Upon this presently it occurred to me, that I should go up t the highest piece of ground I could find, and observe, if I could, how the sets of the tide, or currents, lay when the flood came in, that I might judge whether, if I was driven one way out, I might not expect to be driven another way home, with the same rapidness of the currents. This thought was no sooner in my head than I cast my eye upon a little hill, which sufficiently overlooked the sea both ways, and from whence I had a clear view of the currents, or sets of the tide, and which way

was to guide myself in my return. Here I found, that as the current of the ebb set out close by the south point of he island, so the current of the flood set in close by the shore of the north side; and that I had nothing to do but to keep to the north side of the island in my return, and I should do well enough.

Encouraged with this observation, I resolved, the next morn ing, to set out with the first of the tide; and reposing myself for the night in my canoe, under the great watch-coat I mentioned, I launched out. Í first made a little out to sea, full north, till I began to feel the benefit of the current, which set eastward, and which carried me at a great rate; and yet did not so hurry me as the current on the south side had done before, so as to take from me all government of the boat; bu* having a strong steerage with my paddle, I went at a grea rate directly for the wreck, and in less than two hours I came up to it. It was a dismal sight to look at: the ship, which, by ts building, was Spanish, stuck fast, jammed in between twe ocks; all the stern and quarter of her were beaten to piece. with the sea and as her forecastle, which stuck in the rocks had run on with great violence, her mainmast and foremast were brought by the board, that is to say, broken short off; but her bowsprit was sound, and the head and bow appeared firm. When I came close to her, a dog appeared upon her