inquired after a description of the boat.

Friday described the boat to me well enough; but brought me better to
understand him when he added with some warmth, "We save the white mans
from drown." Then I presently asked him, if there were any white mans,
as he called them, in the boat? "Yes," he said; "the boat full of white
mans." I asked him how many? He told upon his fingers seventeen, I
asked him then what became of them? He told me, "They live, they dwell
at my nation."

This put new thoughts into my head; for I presently imagined that these
might be the men belonging to the ship that was cast away in the sight
of my island, as I now called it; and who, after the ship was struck on
the rock, and they saw her inevitably lost, had saved themselves in
their boat, and were landed upon that wild shore among the savages. Upon
this, I inquired of him more critically what was become of them; he
assured me they lived still there; that they had been there about four
years; that the savages let them alone, and gave them victuals to live
on. I asked him how it came to pass they did not kill them, and eat
them? He said, "No, they make brother with them;" that is, as I
understood him, a truce; and then he added, "They no eat mans but when
make the war fight;" that is to say, they never eat any men but such as
come to fight with them, and are taken in battle.

It was after this some considerable time, that being upon the top of the
hill, at the east side of the island, from whence, as I have said, I
had, in a clear day, discovered the main or continent of America,
Friday, the weather being very serene, looks very earnestly towards the
main land, and, in a kind of surprise, fells a jumping and dancing, and
calls out to me, for I was at some distance from him. I asked him what
was the matter? "O joy!" says he; "O glad! there see my country, there
my nation!" I observed an extraordinary sense of pleasure appeared in
his face, and his eyes sparkled, and his countenance discovered a
strange eagerness, as if he had a mind to be in his own country again.
This observation of mine put a great many thoughts into me, which made
me at first not so easy about my new man Friday as I was before; and I
made no doubt but that if Friday could get back to his own nation again,
he would not only forget all his religion, but all his obligation to me,
and would be forward enough to give his countrymen an account of me, and
come back perhaps with a