would provide for the accidents that might happen, and for the time
that was to come, even not only after my ammunition should be
spent, but even after my health and strength should decay.

I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being
destroyed at one blast - I mean my powder being blown up by
lightning; and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me,
when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now.

And now being about to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene
of silent life, such, perhaps, as was never heard of in the world
before, I shall take it from its beginning, and continue it in its
order. It was by my account the 30th of September, when, in the
manner as above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island;
when the sun, being to us in its autumnal equinox, was almost over
my head; for I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the
latitude of nine degrees twenty-two minutes north of the line.

After I had been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my
thoughts that I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books,
and pen and ink, and should even forget the Sabbath days; but to
prevent this, I cut with my knife upon a large post, in capital
letters - and making it into a great cross, I set it up on the
shore where I first landed - "I came on shore here on the 30th
September 1659."

Upon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with my
knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest, and
every first day of the month as long again as that long one; and
thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning