284 ARRIVAL OF THE SAVAGES.

months of November and December, in which I designed to make
my adventure.

When the settled season began to come in, as the thought of my
design returned with the fair weather, I was preparing daily for
the voyage. And the first thing I did was to lay by a certain
quantity of provisions, being the stores for our voyage; and in-
tended, in a week or a fortnight’s time, to open the dock and
launch out our boat. I was busy one morning upon something
of this kind, when I called to Friday, and bade him go to the sea-
shore and sce if he could find a turtle or tortoise—a thing which
we generally got once a week, for the sake of the eggs as well as
the flesh. Friday had not been long gone, when he came running
back, and flew over my outer wall or fence like one that felt not
the ground or the steps he set his feet on; and before I had time
to speak to him, he cries out to me, “O master! O master !—O
sorrow !—O bad!” “ What’s the matter, Friday?” says I. “Oh—
yonder—there,” says he; “one, two, three canoe!—one, two,
three!”” By his way of speaking I concluded there were six; but
on inquiry, I found it was but three. “ Well, Friday,” says I, “do
not be frighted.” So I heartened him up as well as I could.
However, I saw the poor fellow was most terribly scared; for
nothing ran in his head but that they were come to look for him,
and would cut him in pieces and eat him; and the poor fellow
trembled so, that I scarce knew what to do with him. I com-
forted him as well as I could, and told him I was in as much
danger as he, and that they would eat me as well as him: “ But,”
says I, “ Friday, we must resolve to fight them. Can you fight,
Friday?” ‘Me shoot,” says he; “but there come many great
number.” “No matter for that,” said I again; “ our guns will
fright them that we do not kill;”’ so I asked him, ‘ Whether, if I
resolved to defend him, he would defend me, and stand by me, and
do just as I bid him?” He said, “Me die, when you bid die,
master.” So I went and fetched a good dram of rum and gave
him; for I had been so good a husband of my rum that I had a
great deal left. When he had drunk it, I made him take the two
fowling-pieces, which we always carried, and load them with large
swan-shot, as big as small pistol bullets; then I took four muskets,