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abated and we came out to stretch our
limbs. We found the garden near washed away, and where the path had
led down the hillside a gully as deep as my waist had been cut by the
waters. The beach was covered in seaweed tossed up by the waves. Then
it began to rain again, and for a third night we retired to our
miserable shelter, hungry, cold, unable to make fire.
    'That
night Cruso, who had seemed quite mended, complained of being hot,
and tossed off his clothes and lay panting. Then he began to rave and
throw himself from side to side as if unable to breathe, till I
thought the bed would break. I gripped him by the shoulders and tried
to soothe him, but he beat me away. Great tremors ran through him; he
grew stiff as a board and began to bellow about Masa or Massa ,
a word with no meaning I can discover. Woken by the din, Friday took
out his flute and began to play his damnable tune, till what with the
rain and the wind and Cruso's shouting and Friday's music, I could
have believed myself in a madhouse. But I continued to hold Cruso and
soothe him, and at last he grew still, and Friday ceased his noise,
and even the rain grew softer. I stretched myself out against Cruso
to warm his body with mine; in time the trembling gave out and both
he and I slept.
    'I
came to myself in daylight, in an unfamiliar silence, the storm
having at last blown itself out. A hand was exploring my body. So
befuddled was I that I thought myself still aboard the ship, in the
Portuguese captain's bed. But then I turned and saw Cruso's wild hair
and the great beard he never cut and his yellow eyes, and I knew it
was all true, I was indeed cast away on an island with a man named
Cruso, who though an Englishman was as strange to me as a Laplander.
I pushed his hand away and made to rise, but he held me. No doubt I
might have freed myself, for I was stronger than he. But I thought,
He has not known a woman for fifteen years, why should he not have
his desire? So I resisted no more but let him do as he wished. When I
left the hut Friday was nowhere in sight, for which I was glad. I
walked some distance, then sat down to collect myself. Around·
me in the bushes settled a flock of sparrows, cocking their heads
curiously, quite unafraid, having known no harm from man since the
beginning of time. Was I to regret what had passed between Cruso and
me? Would it have been better had we continued to live as brother and
sister, or host and guest, or master and servant, or whatever it was
we had been? Chance had cast me on his island, chance had thrown me
in his arms. In a world of chance, is there a better and a worse? We
yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the
blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we
awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks
of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and
inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through
which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right
do we close our ears to them? The questions echoed in my head without
answer.
    'I
was walking one day at the north end of the island, on the Bluff,
when I spied Friday below me bearing on his shoulder a log or beam
nearly as long as himself. While I watched, he crossed the shelf of
rock that stretched out from the cliff-face, launched his log upon
the water -which was deep at that place -and straddled it.
    'I
had often observed Friday at his fishing, which he did standing on
the rocks, waiting till a fish swam below him and then darting his
spear at it with great dexterity. How he could spear fish belly-down
upon his clumsy vessel was not plain to me.
    'But
Friday was not fishing. After paddling out some hundred yards from
the shelf into the thickest of the seaweed, he reached into a bag
that hung about his neck and brought out handfuls of white flakes
which he began to scatter over the water. At first I thought this was
bait to lure the fish to