upon it; and I,
running in to take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive from the
dog. I had a great mind to bring it home if I could, for I had often
been musing whether it might not be possible to get a kid or two, and so
raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my powder and
shot should be all spent. I made a collar for this little creature, and
with a string, which I made of some rope-yam, which I always carried
about me, I led him along, though with some difficulty, till I came to my
bower, and there I enclosed him and left him, for I was very impatient to
be at home, from whence I had been absent above a month.

I cannot express what a satisfaction it was to me to come into my old
hutch, and lie down in my hammock-bed. This little wandering journey,
without settled place of abode, had been so unpleasant to me, that my own
house, as I called it to myself, was a perfect settlement to me compared
to that; and it rendered everything about me so comfortable, that I
resolved I would never go a great way from it again while it should be my
lot to stay on the island.

I reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself after my long
journey; during which most of the time was taken up in the weighty affair
of making a cage for my Poll, who began now to be a mere domestic, and to
be well acquainted with me. Then I began to think of the poor kid which
I had penned in within my little circle, and resolved to go and fetch it
home, or give it some food; accordingly I went, and found it where I left
it, for indeed it could not get out, but was almost starved for want of
food. I went and cut boughs of trees, and branches of such shrubs as I
could find, and threw it over, and having fed it, I tied it as I did
before, to lead it away; but it was so tame with being hungry, that I had
no need to have tied it, for it followed me like a dog: and as I
continually fed it, the creature became so loving, so gentle, and so
fond, that it became from that time one of my domestics also, and would
never leave me afterwards.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the
30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the
anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two years,
and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there,
I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments of the many
wonderful mercies which my solitary condit