Читать «Робинзон Крузо / Robinson Crusoe» онлайн - страница 15

I went aboard the ship, sailed to Guinea, on the 1st September 1659, exactly eight years after my first voyage from Hull, when our board was shipwrecked. We sailed up the coast to Cape St Augustino, when we lost sight of land. Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six guns and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our trade with the negroes.

In the course, we passed the line in about twelve days’ time, and were, by our last observation, in seven degrees twenty-two minutes northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge. It began from the south-east, came about to the north-west, and then settled in the north-east; from whence it blew in such a terrible manner, that for twelve days together we could do nothing but drive, and, scudding away before it, let it carry us whither, and, during these twelve days, I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up; nor, indeed, did any in the ship expect to save their lives.

We could understand, that this terrible storm blew us far away from the trading routes. We couldn’t observe neither latitude, nor longitude, we understand, if we came to land, we would probably be eaten by savages.

In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early in the morning cried out, “Land!” and we had no sooner run out of the cabin to look out, in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we were, we knew nothing where we were, or upon what land it was we were driven – whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or not inhabited. Than the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment her motion being so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner that we expected we should all have perished immediately; and we were immediately driven into our close quarters, to shelter us from the very foam and spray of the sea. As the rage of the wind was still great, though rather less than at first, we could not so much as hope to have the ship hold many minutes without breaking into pieces.

We could not move the ship off the sand. We climbed into a boat and left the ship. We rowed through that wild water towards the land, knowing that we were rowing towards our greatest danger. What the shore was, whether rock or sand, whether steep or shoal, we knew not. The only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow of expectation was, if we might find some bay or gulf, or the mouth of some river, where by great chance we might have run our boat in, or got under the lee of the land, and perhaps made smooth water.