The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (motivational novels TXT) π
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Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular books ever written in the English language, published in innumerable editions and translated into almost every language of the world, not to mention the many versions created in film, television and even radio. First published in 1719, it can also claim to be one of the first novels ever written in English.
Written in the form of an autobiography, it describes the life of the eponymous narrator Robinson Crusoe. A wild youth, he breaks away from his family to go to sea. After many adventures including being captured and made into a slave, he is eventually shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of South America. Crusoe is the only survivor of the wreck. He is thus forced to find ways to survive on the island without any other assistance. His first years are miserable and hard, but he ultimately manages to domesticate goats and raise crops, making his life tolerable. While suffering from an illness, he undergoes a profound religious conversion, and begins to ascribe his survival to a beneficent Providence.
Crusoe lives alone on the island for more than twenty years until his life changes dramatically after he discovers a human footprint in the sand, indicating the undeniable presence of other human beings. These, it turns out, are the native inhabitants of the mainland, who visit the island only occasionally. To Crusoeβs horror, he discovers that these people practice cannibalism. He rescues one of their prisoners, who becomes his servant (or βmanβ) Friday, named for the day of the week on which he rescued him, and together, their adventures continue.
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- Author: Daniel Defoe
Read book online Β«The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (motivational novels TXT) πΒ». Author - Daniel Defoe
Yet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly, that I was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the excessive heat of the climate; our principal trading being upon the coast, from latitude of fifteen degrees north even to the line itself.
I was now set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great misfortune, dying soon after his arrival, I resolved to go the same voyage again, and I embarked in the same vessel with one who was his mate in the former voyage, and had now got the command of the ship. This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not carry quite Β£100 of my new-gained wealth, so that I had Β£200 left, which I had lodged with my friendβs widow, who was very just to me, yet I fell into terrible misfortunes. The first was this: our ship making her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those islands and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she could make. We crowded also as much canvas as our yards would spread, or our masts carry, to get clear; but finding the pirate gained upon us, and would certainly come up with us in a few hours, we prepared to fight; our ship having twelve guns, and the rogue eighteen. About three in the afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to, by mistake, just athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended, we brought eight of our guns to bear on that side, and poured in a broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning our fire, and pouring in also his small shot from near two hundred men which he had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves. But laying us on board the next time upon our other quarter, he entered sixty men upon our decks, who immediately fell to cutting and hacking the sails and rigging. We plied them with small shot, half-pikes, powder-chests, and suchlike, and cleared our deck of them twice. However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being disabled, and three of our men killed, and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors.
The usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I apprehended; nor was I carried up the country to the emperorβs court, as the rest of our men were, but was kept by the captain of the rover as his proper prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble, and fit for his business. At this surprising change of my circumstances, from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my fatherβs prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable and have none to relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually brought to pass that I could not be worse; for now the hand of Heaven had overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption; but, alas! this was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in the sequel of this story.
As my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was in hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea again, believing that it would some time or other be his fate to be taken by a Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden, and do the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin to look after the ship.
Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it; nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had nobody to communicate it to that would embark with meβ βno fellow-slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotchman there but myself; so that for two years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.
After about two years, an odd circumstance presented itself, which put the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my head. My patron lying at home longer than usual without fitting out his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly, once or twice a week, sometimes oftener if the weather was fair, to take the shipβs pinnace and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always took me and young Maresco with him to row the boat, we made him very merry, and
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