One day, walking up the same hill, but the weather being hazy at sea, so that we could not see the continent, I called to him, and said, “Friday, do not you wish yourself in your own country, your own nation?” “Yes,” he said, “I be much O glad to be at my own nation.” “What would you do there?” said I; “would you turn wild again, eat man’s flesh again, and be a savage as you were before?” He looked full of concern, and, shaking his head, said, “No, no! Friday tell them to live good, tell them to pray God, tell them to eat corn bread, cattle flesh, milk, no eat man again.” “Why, then,” said I to him, “they will kill you!” He looked grave at that, and then said, “No, they no kill me; they willing love learn”—he meant by this, they would be willing to learn. He added, they learned much of the bearded mans that came in the boat. Then I asked him if he would go back to them? He smiled at that, and told me he could not swim so far. I told him I would make a canoe for him. He told me he would go, if I would go with him. “I go!” said I, “why, they will eat me if I come there!” “No, no!” says he, “me make them no eat you, me make they much love you”—he meant he would tell them how I had killed his enemies and saved his life, and so he would make them love me. Then he told me how kind they were to seventeen white men, or bearded men, as he called them, who came on shore in distress.
From this time, I confess, I had a mind to venture over, and see if I could possibly join with these bearded men, who, I made no doubt, were Spaniards or Portuguese; not doubting but, if I could, we might find some method to escape from thence, being upon the continent, and a good company together, better than I could from an island forty miles off the shore, and alone without help. So, after some days, I took Friday to work again by way of discourse, and told him I would give him a boat to go back to his own nation; and accordingly, I carried him to my frigate, which lay on the other side of the island; and having cleared it of water (for I always kept it sunk in the water), I brought it out, showed it him, and we both went into it.
I found he was a most dexterous fellow at managing it, would make it go almost as swift and fast again as I could; so when he was in, I said to him, “Well, now, Friday, shall we go to your nation?” He looked very dull at my saying so, which it seems was because he thought the boat too small to go so far. I told him then I had a bigger; so the next day I went to the place where the first boat lay which I had made, but which I could not get into the water; he said that was big enough; but then, as I had taken no care of it, and it had lain two or three-and-twenty years there, the sun had so split and dried it, that it was in a manner rotten. Friday told me such a boat would do very well, and would carry “much enough vittle, drink, bread”—that was his way of talking.