human voice when kindness was sincerely
meant. So I went on speaking to him, saying the same words over and
over, laying my hand on his arm to soothe him; I guided him to his
master's bedside and made him kneel there till I felt calm overtake
us, and the sailor who escorted us began to yawn and shuffle.
'It
was agreed that I should sleep in Cruso's cabin. As for Friday, I
pleaded that he not be quartered with the common seamen. "He
would rather sleep on the floor at his master's feet than on the
softest bed in Christendom," I said. So Friday was allowed to
sleep under the transoms a few paces from the door of Cruso's cabin;
from this little den he barely stirred for the duration of the
voyage, except when I brought him to visit his master. Whenever I
spoke to him I was sure to smile and touch his arm, treating him as
we treat a frightened horse. For I saw that the ship and the sailors
must be awakening the darkest of memories in him of the time when he
was torn from his homeland and transported into captivity in the New
World.
'We
were used with great civility throughout the voyage. The ship's
surgeon visited Cruso twice a day, and by letting blood afforded him
much relief. But to me he would privately shake his head. "Your
husband is sinking," he would say-"I fear we came too
late."
'(I
should tell you that Captain Smith had proposed that I call Cruso my
husband and declare we had been shipwrecked together, to make my path
easier both on board and when we should come ashore in England. If
the story of Bahia and the mutineers got about, he said, it would not
easily be understood what kind of woman I was. I laughed when he said
this -what kind of woman was I, in truth? -but took his advice, and
so was known as Mrs Cruso to all on board.
'One
night at dinner -I ate all this time at the captain's table -he
whispered in my ear that he would be honoured if I would consent to
pay him a visit in his cabin afterwards, for a glass of cordial. I
pretended to take his offer as mere gallantry, and did not go. He
pressed me no further, but continued to behave as courteously as
before. In all I found him a true gentleman, though a mere
ship's-master and the son of a pedlar, as he told me.)
'I
brought Cruso his food in bed and coaxed him to eat as if he were a
child. Sometimes he seemed to know where he was, at other times not.
One night, hearing him rise, I lit a candle, and saw him standing at
the cabin door, pressing against it, not understanding that it opened
inwards. I came over to him and touched him, and found his face wet
with tears. "Come, my Cruso," I whispered, and guided him
back to his bunk, and soothed him till he slept again.
'On
the island I believe Cruso might yet have shaken off the fever, as he
had done so often before. For though not a young man, he was
vigorous. But now he was dying of woe, the extremest woe. With every
passing day he was conveyed farther from the kingdom he pined for, to
which he would never find his way again. He was a prisoner, and I,
despite myself, his gaoler.
'Sometimes
in his sleep he would mutter in Portuguese, as he seemed always to do
when the bygone past came back to him. Then I would take his hand, or
lie beside him and talk to him. "Do you remember, my Cruso,"
I would say, "how after the great storm had taken away our roof
we would lie at night and watch the shooting stars, and wake in the
glare of the moon, thinking it was day? In England we will have a
roof over our heads that no wind can tear off. But did it not seem to
you that the moon of our island was larger than the moon of England,
as you remember it, and the stars more numerous? Perhaps we were
nearer the moon there, as we were certainly nearer the sun.
"Yet,"
I would pursue, "if we were nearer the heavens there, why was it
that so little of the island could be called extraordinary? Why were
there no strange fruits, no serpents, no lions? Why did the cannibals
never come? What will we tell folk in England when they ask us