The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Chapter 7, 8, 9

Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat with the shoulder-of-mutton sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa; but this was in vain. Then I thought I would go and look on our ship’s boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great way in the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay almost where she did at first, but not quite, and was turned by the force of the waves and the winds almost bottom upwards, against the high ridge of a beachy rough sand, but no water about her as before.

If I had had hands to have refitted her, and have launched her into the water, the boat would have done very well, and I might have gone back into the Brazils with her easy enough; but I might have easily foreseen, that I could no more turn her, and set her upright upon her bottom, than I could remove the island. However, I went to the wood, and cut levers and rollers, and brought them to the boat, resolving to try what I could do, suggesting to myself, that if I could but turn her down, I might easily repair the damage she had received, and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea in her very easily.

I spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I think, three or four weeks about it; at last, finding it impossible to heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand to undermine it, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide it right in the fall.

But when I had done this, I was unable to stir it up again, or to get under it, much less to move it forwards towards the water; so I was forced to give it over: and yet, though I gave over the hopes of the boat, my desire to venture over for the main increased, rather than decreased, as the means for it seemed impossible.

This at length set me upon thinking whether it was not possible to make myself a canoe, or periagua, such as the natives of those climates make, even without tools, or, as I might say, without hands, namely, of the trunk of a great tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy; and pleased myself extremely with the thoughts of making it, and with my having much more convenience for it than any of the negroes or Indians; but not at all considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under more than the Indians did, namely, want of hands to move it into the water when it was made—a difficulty much harder for me to surmount than all the consequences of want of tools could be to them: for what was it to me that, when I had chosen a vast tree in the woods, I might with great trouble cut it down, if after I might be able with my tools to hew and dub the outside into the proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make it hollow, so as to make a boat of it—if, after all this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and was not able to launch it into the water.

One would have thought, I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of my circumstances, while I was making this boat, but I should have immediately thought how I should get it into the sea; but my thoughts were so intent upon my voyage over the sea in it, that I never once considered how I should get it off the land: and it was really, in its own nature, more easy for me to guide it over forty-five miles of sea, than about forty-five fathoms of land, where it lay, to set it afloat in the water.

I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was ever able to undertake it: not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put a stop to my own inquiries into it by this foolish answer which I gave myself:—Let me first make it, I’ll warrant I’ll find some way or other to get it along when it is done.

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