CHAPTER 27 – ENGLISHMEN

We put all the food in my cave. It was safe there. Then the Spanish and Friday’s father could go back. They could bring the other men here.

We gave them food and four guns in case they were attacked again. Then they took the canoe and they went away.

Two days passed since they left when something unexpected happened.

I was woken up by Friday at about 6 o’clock in the morning. “Are they here?” I asked Friday. He said, “Not yet. But somebody else is here. I saw a boat.”

I went to the top of the nearest hill. I saw the boat. It was clear that these people weren’t the friends who we expected. The boat came from a completely different direction. I could also see a ship. I knew this shape. The ship was English.

I was confused. It was true that I was happy to see Englishmen after twenty-seven years on the island. But I was also worried. The island wasn’t near ways of English ships. Also, there were no storms recently. So why were they here? Maybe the men were pirates. Maybe they wanted to hide something on the island.

I decided to be very careful. Friday and I stayed hidden and we watched the visitors for a while. The boat came to the beach and I counted eleven men. Soon I saw that they were all Englishmen.

Three of the men had hands tied together. The eight other men took them to the beach. Two prisoners were calm, but the third prisoner tried to say something. He looked very scared. He asked the men in the boat for something.

When Friday saw this, he turned to me and told me that Englishmen also ate people.

I told him that they definitely didn’t plan to eat the prisoners. I thought that they wanted to shoot them.

After a while I noticed that this wasn’t their plan. The men from the boat started to explorethe island. The three tied prisoners sat on the beach with two men as guards. The prisoners looked hopeless. I remembered my arrival on the island. I also felt lost first, exactly like those prisoners.

Low tide came soon. The level of the sea was low. Their boat was on the sand. They couldn’t move the boat. I heard them shout to each other, “We will leave with the next hightide.” This gave us some hours.

Friday and I stayed hidden until dark. Then I noticed that the men who stood the guard started to sleep. The three prisoners sat under a tree quite close to us. It looked like they were also quite far from the other sailors. We could come closer to them.

When we were very close to the prisoners, I spoke quietly to them. We were still hidden behind the trees and they couldn’t see us. When they heard my voice, they couldn’t believethat somebody spoke English to them from the dark forest.

“What was that?” asked one of the men.

“I heard something. I heard a tree speak,” answered the other. “But it’s impossible. A tree can’t speak English.”

“Yes, you heard something but it’s not a tree,” I said quietly. “My name is Robinson Crusoe. I’m an Englishman. I live on this island. I will help you if you tell me who you are.”

After the first shocking moment, one man answered my question. He was the captain of the ship, but some of the sailors criticized him and they started a rebellion. He, his assistant and one passenger became prisoners. The other sailors wanted to leave them here to die.

The captain said, “The truth is that there are only two dangerous sailors who control the others in the group. Eighty percent of them are still loyal to me. If the leaders are caught, the rest will return under my control.”