would have told me something of the joy they were in at the sight
of a boat and pilots, to carry them away to the person and place
from whence all these new comforts came. But it was impossible to
express it by words, for their excessive joy naturally driving them
to unbecoming extravagances, they had no way to describe them but
by telling me they bordered upon lunacy, having no way to give vent
to their passions suitable to the sense that was upon them; that in
some it worked one way and in some another; and that some of them,
through a surprise of joy, would burst into tears, others be stark
mad, and others immediately faint. This discourse extremely
affected me, and called to my mind Friday’s ecstasy when he met his
father, and the poor people’s ecstasy when I took them up at sea
after their ship was on fire; the joy of the mate of the ship when
he found himself delivered in the place where he expected to
perish; and my own joy, when, after twenty-eight years’ captivity,
I found a good ship ready to carry me to my own country. All these
things made me more sensible of the relation of these poor men, and
more affected with it.
Having thus given a view of the state of things as I found them, I
must relate the heads of what I did for these people, and the
condition in which I left them. It was their opinion, and mine
too, that they would be troubled no more with the savages, or if
they were, they would be able to cut them off, if they were twice
as many as before; so they had no concern about that. Then I
entered into a serious discourse with the Spaniard, whom I call
governor, about their stay in the island; for as I was not come to
carry any of them off, so it would not be just to carry off some
and leave others, who, perhaps, would be unwilling to stay if their
strength was diminished. On the other hand, I told them I came to
establish them there, not to remove them; and then I let them know
that I had brought with me relief of sundry kinds for them; that I
had been at a great charge to supply them with all things
necessary, as well for their convenience as their defence; and that
I had such and such particular persons with me, as well to increase
and recruit their number, as by the particular necessary
employments which they were bred to, being artificers, to assist
them in those things in which at present they were in want.
They were all together when I talked thus to them; and before I
delivered to them the stores I had brought, I asked them, one by
one, if they had entirely forgot and buried the first animosities
that had been among them, and would shake hands with one another,
and engage in a strict friendship and union of interest, that so
there might be no more misunderstandings and jealousies.
Will Atkins, with abundance of frankness and good humour, said they
had met with affliction enough to make them all sober, and enemies
enough to make them all friends; that, for his part, he would live
and die with them, and was so far from designing anything against
the Spaniards, that he owned they had done nothing to him but what
his own mad humour made necessary, and what he would have done, and
perhaps worse, in their case; and that he would ask them pardon, if
I desired it, for the foolish and brutish things he had done to
them, and was very willing and desirous of living in terms of
entire friendship and union with them, and would do anything that
lay in his power to convince them of it; and as for going to
England, he cared not if he did not go thither these twenty years.
The Spaniards said they had, indeed, at first disarmed and excluded
Will Atkins and his two countrymen for their ill conduct, as they
had let me know, and they appealed to me for the necessity they