give his consent to any thing so much for my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any such thing after the discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; that I might depend I should never have their consent to it; that, for her part, she would not have so much hand in my destruction, and I should never have it to say that my mother was willing when my father was not. Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard afterwards that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her with a sigh, "That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but, if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born. I can give no consent to it." It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose; though, in the mean time, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business, and frequently expostulating with my father and mother about their being so positively determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, whither I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time, but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being going by sea to London in his father's ship, and prompting me to go with them, with the common allurement of a seafaring man that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, not so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without asking God's blessing or my father's, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September, 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London. Never any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe, began sooner or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner got out of the Humber but the wind began to blow and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body, and terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father's house, and abandoning my duty. All the good counsels of my parents, my father's tears, and my mother's entreaties, came now fresh in my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has been since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to my God and my father. ROBINSON CRUSOE DISCOVERS THE FOOTPRINT. IT happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened ; I looked round me: I could hear nothing, nor see any thing. I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore, and down the shore: but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy: but there was no room for that; for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused, and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree; looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes an affrighted imagination represented things to me in; how many wild ideas were formed every moment in my fancy; and what strange, unaccountable whimseys came into my thoughts by the way. When I came to my castle (for so I think I called it ever after this), I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder at first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock which I called a door, I can not remember; for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat. I slept none that night. The farther I was from the occasion of my fright, the greater my apprehensions were; which is something contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all creatures in fear: but I was so embarrassed with my own frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off it. Sometimes I fancied it must be the Devil: and reason joined in with me upon this supposition; for how should any other thing in human shape come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them? What marks were there of any other footsteps? and how was it possible a man should come there? But then, to think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place, where there could be no manner of occasion for it but to leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even for no purpose too, - for he could not be sure I should see it, this was an amusement the other way. I considered that : the Devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot; that, as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple as to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea, upon a high wind, would have defaced entirely all this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the Devil. Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all apprehensions of its being the Devil: and I presently concluded, then, that it must be some more dangerous creature; viz., that it must be some of the savages of the mainland over against me, who had wandered out to sea in their canoes, and, either driven by the currents or contrary winds, had made the island, and had been on shore, but were gone away again to sea, being as loath, perhaps, to have staid in this desolate island as Í would have been to have them. While these reflections were rolling upon my mind, I was very thankful in my thoughts that I was so happy as not to be thereabouts at that time, or that they did not see my boat, by which they would have concluded that some inhabitants had been in the place, and perhaps have searched farther for me. Then terrible thoughts racked my imagination about their having found my boat, and that there were people here; and that, if so, I should certainly have them come again in greater numbers, and devour me; that if it should happen so that they should not find me, yet they would find my inclosure, destroy all my corn, and carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want. Thus my fear banished all my religious hope, - all that former confidence in God which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of his goodness; as if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not preserve by his power the provision which he had made for me by his goodness! I reproached myself with my laziness, that would not sow any more corn one year than would just serve me till the next season, as if no accident would intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon the ground and this I thought so just a reproof, that I resolved, for the future, to have two or three years' corn beforehand; so that, whatever might come, I might not perish for want of bread. How strange a checker-work of Providence is the life of man! and by what secret differing springs are the affections hurried about as differing circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; o-day we desire what to-morrow we fear, nay, even tremble at e apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me at this time in the most lively manner imaginable: for I, whose only affliction was that I seemed banished from human society; that I was alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I call a silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or to appear among the rest of his creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could bestow, I say, that I should now tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground at but the shadow or silent appearance of a man's having set his foot on the island! - Such is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great many curious speculations afterwards, when I had a little. recovered my first surprise. I considered that this was the station of life the infinitely wise and good providence of God had determined for me; that as I could not foresee what the ends of Divine Wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute his sovereignty, who, as I was his creature, had an undoubted right by creation to govern and dispose of me absolutely as he thought fit; and who, as I was a creature who had offended him, had likewise a judicial right to condemn me to what punishment he thought fit; and that it was my part to submit to bear his indignation, because I had sinned against him. I then reflected, that God, who was not only righteous, but omnipotent, as he had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so he was able to deliver me; that, if he did not think fit to do it, it was my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to his will; and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in him, pray to him, and quietly to attend the dictates and directions of his daily providence. These thoughts took me up many hours, days, nay, I may say, weeks and months. And one particular effect of my cogitations on this occasion I can not omit; viz., one morning early, lying in my bed, and filled with thoughts about my danger from the appearance of savages, I found it discomposed me very much: upon which those words of the Scripture came into my thoughts, “ Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee; and thou shalt glorify me." 66 Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only comforted, but I was guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God for deliverance. When I had done praying, I took up my Bible and, opening it to read, the first words that presented to me were, "Wait on the Lord, and be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord." It is impossible to express the comfort this gave me; and, in return, I thankfully laid down the book, and was no more sad, at least, not on that occasion. In the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot when I came on shore from my boat. This cheered me up a little too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot. And why might not I come that way from the boat, as well as I was going that way to the boat? Again: I considered also that I could by no means tell for certain where I had trod, and where I had not; and that if, at last, this was only the print of my own foot, I had played the part of those fools who strive to make stories of specters and apparitions, and then are themselves frighted at them more than anybody else. Now I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again; for I had not stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began to starve for provision; for I had little or nothing within doors but some barley-cakes and water. Then I knew that my goats wanted to be milked too, which usually was my evening diversion: and the poor creatures were in great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and, indeed, it almost spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their milk. Heartening myself, therefore, with the belief that this was nothing but the print of one of my own feet (and so I might be truly said to start at my own shadow), I began to go abroad again, and went to my country-house to milk my flock. But to see with what fear I went forward; how often I looked behind me; how I was ready every now and then to lay down my basket, and run for my life, it would have made any one have thought I was haunted with an evil conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frighted; and so, indeed, I had. - However, as I went down thus two or three days, and having seen nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination. But I could not persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot. But, when I came to the place first, it appeared evidently to me, that, when I laid up my boat, I could not possibly be on shore anywhere thereabouts. Secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new imaginations, and gave me the vapors again to the highest degree; so that I shook with cold like one in an ague: and I went home again, filled with the belief that some man or men had been on |