and all I had; but at length, when the two old
ones I brought with me were gone, and after some time continually driving
them from me, and letting them have no provision with me, they all ran
wild into the woods, except two or three favourites, which I kept tame,
and whose young, when they had any, I always drowned; and these were part
of my family. Besides these I always kept two or three household kids
about me, whom I taught to feed out of my hand; and I had two more
parrots, which talked pretty well, and would all call "Robin Crusoe," but
none like my first; nor, indeed, did I take the pains with any of them
that I had done with him. I had also several tame sea-fowls, whose name
I knew not, that I caught upon the shore, and cut their wings; and the
little stakes which I had planted before my castle-wall being now grown
up to a good thick grove, these fowls all lived among these low trees,
and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so that, as I said above,
I began to be very well contented with the life I led, if I could have
been secured from the dread of the savages. But it was otherwise
directed; and it may not be amiss for all people who shall meet with my
story to make this just observation from it: How frequently, in the
course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and
which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes
the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be
raised again from the affliction we are fallen into. I could give many
examples of this in the course of my unaccountable life; but in nothing
was it more particularly remarkable than in the circumstances of my last
years of solitary residence in this island.

It was now the month of December, as I said above, in my twenty-third
year; and this, being the southern solstice (for winter I cannot call
it), was the particular time of my harvest, and required me to be pretty
much abroad in the fields, when, going out early in the morning, even
before it was thorough daylight, I was surprised with seeing a light of
some fire upon the shore, at a distance from me of about two miles,
toward that part of the island where I had observed some savages had
been, as before, and not on the other side; but, to my great affliction,
it was on my side of the island.

I was indeed terribly surprised at the sight, and stopped short within my
grove, not daring to go out, lest I might be surprised