This was, to be sure, a surprise of a quite 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 up 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; that very moment a flash of fire bade me listen for a second gun, which, accordingly, in about half a moment, I heard, and, by the sound, knew that it was from that part of the sea where I was driven out with 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 this presence of mind that minute as 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 I 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 several others, all from the same quarter. I plied my fire all night long till day broke; 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 distinguish, no, not with 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 that 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 southeast side of the island, to the rocks, where I had been formerly 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 counter stream, or eddy, were the occasion of my recovering then from the most desperate hopeless condition that ever I had been in all my life.
Thus, what is one man’s 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 east and east-north-east. Had they seen the island, as I must necessarily suppose they did not, they must, as I thought, have endeavoured to have saved themselves on shore by the help of their boat; but the firing of their 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 have endeavoured 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 hand: 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 whiles 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, be starving, and in a condition to eat one another.