348 TUE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

 

as good again as any of the others. They had also formed themselves
a retreat in the thickest part of the woods, where, though there was not
a natural cave, as I had found, yet they made one with incessant
labour of their hands, and where, when the mischief which followed
happened, they secured their wives and children, so that they could
never be found; they having, by sticking innumerable stakes and poles
of the wood, which, as I said, grew so easily, made a grove impassable
except in one place, where they climbed up to get over the outside part,
and then went in by ways of their own leaving.

As to the three reprobates, as I justly call them, though they were
much civilized by their new settlement, compared to what they were
before, and were not so quarrelsome, having not the same opportunity,
yet one of the certain companions of a profligate mind never left them,
and that was their idleness. It is true, they planted corn, and made
fences; but Solomon's words were never better verified than in them:
“Twent by the vineyard of the slothful, and it was overgrown with
thorns; for when the Spaniards came to view their crop, they could
not see it in some places for weeds; the hedge had several gaps in it,
where the wild goats had gotten in and caten up the corn; perhaps
here and there a dead bush was crammed in to stop them out for the
present, but it was only shutting the stable door after the steed was
stolen; whereas, when they looked on the colony of the other two, there
was the very face of industry and success upon all they did; there was
not aweed to be scen in all their corn, or a gap in any of their hedges ;
and they, on the other hand, verified Solomon’s words in another
place: “The diligent hand maketh rich;” for every thing grew and
thrived, and they had plenty within and without; they had more tame
cattle than the others, more utensils and necessaries within doors, and
yet nore pleasure and diversion too.

It is true the wives of the three were very handy and cleanly within
doors; and having learned the English ways of dressing and cooking
from one of the other Englishmen, who, as I said, was a cook’s mate
on board the ship, they dressed their husband's victuals very nicely ;
whereas the other could not be brought to understand it; but then the
husband, who as I said, had been cook’s mate, did it himself; but as for
the husbands .of the three wives, they loitered about, fetched turtles’
eggs, and caught fish and birds; in a word, any thing but labour, and
they fared accordingly. The diligent lived well and comfortably, and
the slothful lived hard and beggarly; and so, I believe, generally
speaking, it is all over the world.

But now I come to a scene different from all that had ever happened
before, cither to them or me; and the origin of the story was this: