surprised to see the sea all smooth and quiet--no
rippling, no motion, no current, any more there than in other places. I
was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time
in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had
occasioned it; but I was presently convinced how it was--viz. that the
tide of ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of waters
from some great river on the shore, must be the occasion of this current,
and that, according as the wind blew more forcibly from the west or from
the north, this current came nearer or went farther from the shore; for,
waiting thereabouts till evening, I went up to the rock again, and then
the tide of ebb being made, I plainly saw the current again as before,
only that it ran farther off, being near half a league from the shore,
whereas in my case it set close upon the shore, and hurried me and my
canoe along with it, which at another time it would not have done.

This observation convinced me that I had nothing to do but to observe the
ebbing and the flowing of the tide, and I might very easily bring my boat
about the island again; but when I began to think of putting it in
practice, I had such terror upon my spirits at the remembrance of the
danger I had been in, that I could not think of it again with any
patience, but, on the contrary, I took up another resolution, which was
more safe, though more laborious--and this was, that I would build, or
rather make, me another periagua or canoe, and so have one for one side
of the island, and one for the other.

You are to understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations
in the island--one my little fortification or tent, with the wall about
it, under the rock, with the cave behind me, which by this time I had
enlarged into several apartments or caves, one within another. One of
these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out beyond my
wall or fortification--that is to say, beyond where my wall joined to the
rock--was all filled up with the large earthen pots of which I have given
an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great baskets, which would hold
five or six bushels each, where I laid up my stores of provisions,
especially my corn, some in the ear, cut off short from the straw, and
the other rubbed out with my hand.

As for my wall, made, as before, with long stakes or piles, those piles
grew all like trees, and were by this time grown so