cape.

But all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such an
undertaking, and how I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps
such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers
of Africa: that if I once came in their power, I should run a hazard of
more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten;
for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coast were cannibals or
man-eaters, and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far from that
shore. Then, supposing they were not cannibals, yet they might kill me,
as many Europeans who had fallen into their hands had been served, even
when they had been ten or twenty together--much more I, that was but one,
and could make little or no defence; all these things, I say, which I
ought to have considered well; and did come into my thoughts afterwards,
yet gave me no apprehensions at first, and my head ran mightily upon the
thought of getting over to the shore.

Now I wished for my boy Xury, and the long-boat with shoulder-of-mutton
sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa;
but this was in vain: then I thought I would go and look at our ship's
boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great way, in
the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay almost where she did at
first, but not quite; and was turned, by the force of the waves and the
winds, almost bottom upward, against a high ridge of beachy, rough sand,
but no water about her. If I had had hands to have refitted her, and to
have launched her into the water, the boat would have done well enough,
and I might have gone back into the Brazils with her easily enough; but I
might have foreseen that I could no more turn her and set her upright
upon her bottom than I could remove the island; however, I went to the
woods, and cut levers and rollers, and brought them to the boat resolving
to try what I could do; suggesting to myself that if I could but turn her
down, I might repair the damage she had received, and she would be a very
good boat, and I might go to sea in her very easily.

I spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I
think, three or four weeks about it; at last finding it impossible to
heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand, to
undermine it, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to
thrust and guide it right in the fall.

But whe