ROBINSON CRUSOES.


At one of the islands belonging to Juan de Ampues, the pilot ran away.
Cifuentes and his crew, all equally ignorant of navigation, made sail
for San Domingo, were dismasted in a gale of wind, and driven in the
night upon the "Serrana" shoals; the crew, a flask of powder and steel,
were saved, but nothing else. They found sea-calves and birds upon the
island, and were obliged to eat them raw, and drink their blood, for
there was no water. After some weeks, they made a raft with fragments of
the wreck, lashed together with calf-skin thongs: three men went off
upon it, and were lost. Two, and a boy, staid upon the island--one of
whom, Moreno, died four days afterwards raving mad, having gnawed the
flesh off his arms: the survivors, Master John and the boy, dug holes in
the sand with tortoise-shells, and lined them with calf-skins to catch
the rain. Where the vessel was wrecked, they found a stone which served
them for a flint; this invaluable prize enabled them to make a fire.
Two men had been living upon another island two leagues from them, in
similar distress, for five years; these saw the fire, and upon a raft
joined their fellow sufferers. They now built a boat with the fragments
of the wreck, made sails of calf-skins, and caulked her with their fat,
mixed with charcoal: one man and the boy went away in her: Master John,
and one whose name has not been preserved, would not venture in her:
they made themselves coracles with skins, and coasted round the shoals,
which they estimated at twelve leagues long. At low water there were
seventeen islands, but only five which were not sometimes overflowed.
Fish, turtle, sea-calves, birds, and a root like purslane, was their
food. The whites of turtle-eggs, when dried and buried for a fortnight,
turned to water, which they found good drink: five months in the year