332 ROBINSON CRUSOE.

savages, orif they were, they would be able to cut them off, if
they were twice as many as before ; so they had no concern about
that. Then I entered into a serious discourse with the Spaniard,
whoin I call governor, about their stay in the island ; for as I was
not come to carry any of them off, so it would not be just to
carry off some and leave others, who, perhaps, would be unwilling
to stay if their strength was diminished. On the other hand, I
toid them I came to establish them there, not to remove them;
and then I let them know that I had brought with me relief of
sundry kind for them ; that I had been at a great charge to
supply them with all things necessary, as well for their conve-
nience as their defence ; and that I had such and such particu-
lar persons with me, as well to increase and recruit their num-
ber, as by the particular necessary employments which they
were bred to, being artificers, to assist them in those things in
which at present they were in want.

They were all together when I talked thus to them ; and be-
fore I delivered to them the stores I had brought, I asked them,
one by one, if they had entirely forgot and buried the first ani-
mosities that had been among them, and would shake hands
with one another, and engage in a strict friendship and union
of interest, that so there might be no more misunderstandings
and jealousies.

Will Atkins, with abundance of frankness and good humor,
said they had met with affliction enough to make them all sober,
and enemies enough to make them all friends; that, for his
part, he would live and die with them, and was so far from de-
signing anything against the Spaniards, that he owned they had
done nothing to him but what his own mad humor made neces-
sary, and what he would have done, and perhaps worse, in their
case; and that he would ask them pardon, if I desired it, for
the foolish and brutish things he had done to them, and was
very willing and desirous of living in terms of entire friendship
and union with them, and would do anything that lay in his
power to convince them of it; and as for going to England, he
cared not if he did not go thither these twenty years.

The Spaniards said they had, indeed, at first disarmed and
excluded Will Atkins and his two countrymen for their ill con-
duct, as they had let me know, and they appealed to me for the
necessity they were under to do so; but that Will Atkins had
behaved himself so bravely in the great fight they had with
the savages, and on several occasions since, and had showed
himself so faithful to, and concerned for, the general interest
of them all, that they had forgotten all that was passed, and