鲁宾孙飘流记 英文版 Robinson Crusoe
丹尼尔.笛福 Daniel Defoe
CHAPTER IX - A BOAT Page 2
In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of theworld here; I had neither the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of theeye, nor the pride of life. I had nothing to covet, for I had allthat I was now capable of enjoying; I was lord of the whole manor;or, if I pleased, I might call myself king or emperor over thewhole country which I had possession of: there were no rivals; Ihad no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me:I might have raised ship-loadings of corn, but I had no use for it;so I let as little grow as I thought enough for my occasion. I hadtortoise or turtle enough, but now and then one was as much as Icould put to any use: I had timber enough to have built a fleet ofships; and I had grapes enough to have made wine, or to have curedinto raisins, to have loaded that fleet when it had been built.
But all I could make use of was all that was valuable: I had enoughto eat and supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me? If Ikilled more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or vermin;if I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled; thetrees that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground; I could makeno more use of them but for fuel, and that I had no occasion forbut to dress my food.
In a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me, uponjust reflection, that all the good things of this world are nofarther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever wemay heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use,and no more. The most covetous, griping miser in the world wouldhave been cured of the vice of covetousness if he had been in mycase; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with.I had no room for desire, except it was of things which I had not,and they were but trifles, though, indeed, of great use to me. Ihad, as I hinted before, a parcel of money, as well gold as silver,about thirty-six pounds sterling. Alas! there the sorry, uselessstuff lay; I had no more manner of business for it; and oftenthought with myself that I would have given a handful of it for agross of tobacco-pipes; or for a hand-mill to grind my corn; nay, Iwould have given it all for a sixpenny-worth of turnip and carrotseed out of England, or for a handful of peas and beans, and abottle of ink. As it was, I had not the least advantage by it orbenefit from it; but there it lay in a drawer, and grew mouldy withthe damp of the cave in the wet seasons; and if I had had thedrawer full of diamonds, it had been the same case - they had beenof no manner of value to me, because of no use.
I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself thanit was at first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body.I frequently sat down to meat with thankfulness, and admired thehand of God's providence, which had thus spread my table in thewilderness. I learned to look more upon the bright side of mycondition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what Ienjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes suchsecret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I takenotice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, whocannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they seeand covet something that He has not given them. All ourdiscontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from thewant of thankfulness for what we have.
Another reflection was of great use to me, and doubtless would beso to any one that should fall into such distress as mine was; andthis was, to compare my present condition with what I at firstexpected it would be; nay, with what it would certainly have been,if the good providence of God had not wonderfully ordered the shipto be cast up nearer to the shore, where I not only could come ather, but could bring what I got out of her to the shore, for myrelief and comfort; without which, I had wanted for tools to work,weapons for defence, and gunpowder and shot for getting my food.
I spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing tomyself, in the most lively colours, how I must have acted if I hadgot nothing out of the ship. How I could not have so much as gotany food, except fish and turtles; and that, as it was long beforeI found any of them, I must have perished first; that I should havelived, if I had not perished, like a mere savage; that if I hadkilled a goat or a fowl, by any contrivance, I had no way to flayor open it, or part the flesh from the skin and the bowels, or tocut it up; but must gnaw it with my teeth, and pull it with myclaws, like a beast.
These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness ofProvidence to me, and very thankful for my present condition, withall its hardships and misfortunes; and this part also I cannot butrecommend to the reflection of those who are apt, in their misery,to say, "Is any affliction like mine?" Let them consider how muchworse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been,if Providence had thought fit.
I had another reflection, which assisted me also to comfort my mindwith hopes; and this was comparing my present situation with what Ihad deserved, and had therefore reason to expect from the hand ofProvidence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute ofthe knowledge and fear of God. I had been well instructed byfather and mother; neither had they been wanting to me in theirearly endeavours to infuse a religious awe of God into my mind, asense of my duty, and what the nature and end of my being requiredof me. But, alas! falling early into the seafaring life, which ofall lives is the most destitute of the fear of God, though Histerrors are always before them; I say, falling early into theseafaring life, and into seafaring company, all that little senseof religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by mymessmates; by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views ofdeath, which grew habitual to me by my long absence from all mannerof opportunities to converse with anything but what was likemyself, or to hear anything that was good or tended towards it.
So void was I of everything that was good, or the least sense ofwhat I was, or was to be, that, in the greatest deliverances Ienjoyed - such as my escape from Sallee; my being taken up by thePortuguese master of the ship; my being planted so well in theBrazils; my receiving the cargo from England, and the like - Inever had once the words "Thank God!" so much as on my mind, or inmy mouth; nor in the greatest distress had I so much as a thoughtto pray to Him, or so much as to say, "Lord, have mercy upon me!"no, nor to mention the name of God, unless it was to swear by, andblaspheme it.
I had terrible reflections upon my mind for many months, as I havealready observed, on account of my wicked and hardened life past;and when I looked about me, and considered what particularprovidences had attended me since my coming into this place, andhow God had dealt bountifully with me - had not only punished meless than my iniquity had deserved, but had so plentifully providedfor me - this gave me great hopes that my repentance was accepted,and that God had yet mercy in store for me.
With these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to aresignation to the will of God in the present disposition of mycircumstances, but even to a sincere thankfulness for my condition;and that I, who was yet a living man, ought not to complain, seeingI had not the due punishment of my sins; that I enjoyed so manymercies which I had no reason to have expected in that place; thatI ought never more to repine at my condition, but to rejoice, andto give daily thanks for that daily bread, which nothing but acrowd of wonders could have brought; that I ought to consider I hadbeen fed even by a miracle, even as great as that of feeding Elijahby ravens, nay, by a long series of miracles; and that I couldhardly have named a place in the uninhabitable part of the worldwhere I could have been cast more to my advantage; a place where,as I had no society, which was my affliction on one hand, so Ifound no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers, to threatenmy life; no venomous creatures, or poisons, which I might feed onto my hurt; no savages to murder and devour me. In a word, as mylife was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercyanother; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort but tobe able to make my sense of God's goodness to me, and care over mein this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I did make ajust improvement on these things, I went away, and was no more sad.I had now been here so long that many things which I had brought onshore for my help were either quite gone, or very much wasted andnear spent.
My ink, as I observed, had been gone some time, all but a verylittle, which I eked out with water, a little and a little, till itwas so pale, it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper.As long as it lasted I made use of it to minute down the days ofthe month on which any remarkable thing happened to me; and first,by casting up times past, I remembered that there was a strangeconcurrence of days in the various providences which befell me, andwhich, if I had been superstitiously inclined to observe days asfatal or fortunate, I might have had reason to have looked uponwith a great deal of curiosity.
First, I had observed that the same day that I broke away from myfather and friends and ran away to Hull, in order to go to sea, thesame day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man-of-war, and madea slave; the same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreckof that ship in Yarmouth Roads, that same day-year afterwards Imade my escape from Sallee in a boat; the same day of the year Iwas born on - viz. the 30th of September, that same day I had mylife so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was caston shore in this island; so that my wicked life and my solitarylife began both on a day.
The next thing to my ink being wasted was that of my bread - I meanthe biscuit which I brought out of the ship; this I had husbandedto the last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a-day forabove a year; and yet I was quite without bread for near a yearbefore I got any corn of my own, and great reason I had to bethankful that I had any at all, the getting it being, as has beenalready observed, next to miraculous.
My clothes, too, began to decay; as to linen, I had had none a goodwhile, except some chequered shirts which I found in the chests ofthe other seamen, and which I carefully preserved; because manytimes I could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was avery great help to me that I had, among all the men's clothes ofthe ship, almost three dozen of shirts. There were also, indeed,several thick watch-coats of the seamen's which were left, but theywere too hot to wear; and though it is true that the weather was soviolently hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not goquite naked - no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not- nor could I abide the thought of it, though I was alone. Thereason why I could not go naked was, I could not bear the heat ofthe sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes on; nay, thevery heat frequently blistered my skin: whereas, with a shirt on,the air itself made some motion, and whistling under the shirt, wastwofold cooler than without it. No more could I ever bring myselfto go out in the heat of the sun without a cap or a hat; the heatof the sun, beating with such violence as it does in that place,would give me the headache presently, by darting so directly on myhead, without a cap or hat on, so that I could not bear it;whereas, if I put on my hat it would presently go away.
Upon these views I began to consider about putting the few rags Ihad, which I called clothes, into some order; I had worn out allthe waistcoats I had, and my business was now to try if I could notmake jackets out of the great watch-coats which I had by me, andwith such other materials as I had; so I set to work, tailoring, orrather, indeed, botching, for I made most piteous work of it.However, I made shift to make two or three new waistcoats, which Ihoped would serve me a great while: as for breeches or drawers, Imade but a very sorry shift indeed till afterwards.
I have mentioned that I saved the skins of all the creatures that Ikilled, I mean four-footed ones, and I had them hung up, stretchedout with sticks in the sun, by which means some of them were so dryand hard that they were fit for little, but others were veryuseful. The first thing I made of these was a great cap for myhead, with the hair on the outside, to shoot off the rain; and thisI performed so well, that after I made me a suit of clothes whollyof these skins - that is to say, a waistcoat, and breeches open atthe knees, and both loose, for they were rather wanting to keep mecool than to keep me warm. I must not omit to acknowledge thatthey were wretchedly made; for if I was a bad carpenter, I was aworse tailor. However, they were such as I made very good shiftwith, and when I was out, if it happened to rain, the hair of mywaistcoat and cap being outermost, I was kept very dry.
After this, I spent a great deal of time and pains to make anumbrella; I was, indeed, in great want of one, and had a great mindto make one; I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they arevery useful in the great heats there, and I felt the heats everyjot as great here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox;besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most usefulthing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I took a world ofpains with it, and was a great while before I could make anythinglikely to hold: nay, after I had thought I had hit the way, Ispoiled two or three before I made one to my mind: but at last Imade one that answered indifferently well: the main difficulty Ifound was to make it let down. I could make it spread, but if itdid not let down too, and draw in, it was not portable for me anyway but just over my head, which would not do. However, at last,as I said, I made one to answer, and covered it with skins, thehair upwards, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, andkept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in thehottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could beforein the coolest, and when I had no need of it could close it, andcarry it under my arm
Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed byresigning myself to the will of God, and throwing myself whollyupon the disposal of His providence. This made my life better thansociable, for when I began to regret the want of conversation Iwould ask myself, whether thus conversing mutually with my ownthoughts, and (as I hope I may say) with even God Himself, byejaculations, was not better than the utmost enjoyment of humansociety in the world?