ROBINSON CRUSOE. , 397

swain, making a long harangue, and repeating all he had said
to me, told the captain in a few words, that as I was now gone
peaceably on shore, they were loath to use any violence with
me, which, if I had not gone on shore, they would otherwise
have done, to oblige me to have gone. They therefore thought
fit to tell him, that as they shipped themselves to serve in the
ship under his command, they would perform it well and faith-
fully ; but if I would not quit the ship, or the captain oblige me
to quit it, they would all leave the ship, and sail no farther with
him; and at that word @Z, he turned his face toward the main-
mast, which was, it seems, the signal agreed on between them,
at which the seamen, being got together there, cried out, “ One
and all! one and all!”

My nephew, the captain, was a man of spirit, and of great
presence of mind ; and though he was surprised, you may be
sure, at the thing, yet he told them calmly that he would con-
sider of the matter; but that he could do nothing in it till he
had spoken to me about it. He used some arguments with
them, to show them the unreasonableness and injustice of the
thing: but it was all in vain; they swore, and shook hands
round before his face, that they would all go on shore, unless
he would engage to them not to suffer me to come any more on
board the ship.

This was a hard article upon him, who knew his obligation
to me, and did not know how I might take it; so he began to
talk smartly to them ; told them that Iwas a very considerable
owner of the ship, and that, in justice, he could not put me out
of my own house ; that this was next door to serving me as the
famous pirate Kidd had done, who made a mutiny in the ship,
set the captain on shore on an uninhabited island, and ran
away with the ship ; that let them go into what ship they would,
if ever they came to England again, it would cost them very
dear ; that the ship was mine, and that he could not put me out
of it; and that he would rather lose the ship, and the voyage
too, than disoblige me so. much; so they might do as they
Pleased. However, he would go on shore ‘and talk with me,
and invited the boatswain to go with him, and perhaps they
might accommodate the matter with me. But they all rejected
the proposal, and said they would have nothing to do with me
any more ; and if I came on board, they would all go on shore.
“Well,” said the captain, “if you are all of this mind, let me go
on shore and talk with him.” So away he came to me with
this account, a little after the message had been brought to me
from the coxswain.

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