THE NEW BOATMAN. 279

them. He smiled at that, and told me he could not swim so far.
T told him I would make a cance for him. He told me he would
go if I would go with him. “TI go!” says I; “why, they will
eat me if I come there.” ‘No, no,” says he; “‘ me make they no
eat you; me make they much love you.” He meant he would
tell them how I had killed his enemies, and saved his life, and so
he would make them love me. Then he told me as well as he
could how kind they were to seventeen white men, or bearded
men, as he called them, who came on shore there in distress.

From this time, I confess, I had a mind to venture over, and see
if I could possibly join with these bearded men, who, I made no
doubt, were Spaniards or Portuguese; not doubting but, if I could,
we might find some method to escape from thence, being upon the
continent, and a good company together, better than I could from
an island forty miles off the shore and alone without help. So,
after some days, I took Friday to work again, by way of discourse,
and told him I would give him a boat to go back to his own
nation; and accordingly I carried him to my frigate, which lay on
the other side of the island, and having cleared it of water, for I
always kept it sunk in the water, brought it out, showed it him,
and we.both went into it.

I found he was a most dexterous fellow at managing it, would
make it go almost as swift and fast again as I could. So when he
was in, I said to him, “ Well now, Friday, shall we go to your
nation?” He looked very dull at my saying so; which it seems
was because he thought the boat too small to go so far. I told
him then I had a bigger. So the next day I went to the place
where the first boat lay which I had made, but which I could not
get into water. He said that was big enough. But then, as I
had taken no care of it, and it had lain two or three and twenty
years there, the sun had split and dried it, that it was in a manner
rotten. Friday told me such a boat would do very well, and would
carry “much enough vittle, drink, bread ;” that was his way of
talking.

Upon the whole, I was by this time so fixed upon my design of.
going over with him to the continent, that I told him we would
go and make one as big as that, and he should go home in it. He