CRUSOE AND THE SPANIARL 297

chiefly hides and silver, and to bring back what Kuropean goods
they could meet with there; that they had five Portuguese sea-
men on board, whom they took out of another wreck; that five of
their own meu were drowned when the first ship was lost, and that
these escaped through infinite dangers and hazards, and arrived
almost starved on the Cannibal coast, where they expected to have
been devoured every moment.

Ie told me they had some arms with them, but they were per-
fectly useless, for that they had neither powder nor ball, the washing
of the sea having spoiled all their powder but a little, which they
used at their first landing to provide themselves some food.

L asked him what he thought would become of them there, and
if they had formed no design of making any escape? He said they
had many consultations about it, but that having neither vessel nor
tools to build one, nor provisions of any kind, their councils always
ended in tears and despair.

IT asked him how he thought they would receive a proposal from
me which might tend towards an escape? and whether, if they
were all here, it. might not be done? I told him with freedom I
feared mostly their treachery and ill usage of me if I put my life
in their hands; for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the
nature of man; nor did men always square their dealings by the
obligations they had received, so much as they did by the advan-
tages they expected. I told him it would be very hard that I
should be the instrument of their deliverance and that they should
afterwards make me their prisoner in New Spain, where an English-
man was certain to be made a sacrifice, what necessity or what
accident soever brought him thither; and that I’d rather be de-
livered up to the savages and be devoured alive, than fall into the
merciless claws of the priests, and be carried into the Inquisition.
I added, that otherwise I was persuaded, if they were all here, we
might with so many hands build a bark large enough to carry us
all away, either to the Brazils southward, or to the islands or
Spanish coast northward; but that if in requital they should,
when I had put weapons into their hands, carry me by force among
their own people, I might be ill used for my kindness to them, and
make niy case worse than it was before.