When the settled season began to come in, as the thought of my design returned with the fair weather, I was preparing daily for the voyage:  and the first thing I did was to lay by a certain quantity of provisions, being the stores for our voyage:  and intended, in a week or a fortnight’s time, to open the dock, and launch out our boat.  I was busy one morning upon something of this kind, when I called to Friday, and bid him go to the sea-shore, and see if he could find a turtle, or tortoise, a thing which we generally got once a week, for the sake of the eggs as well as the flesh.  Friday had not been long gone, when he came running back and flew over my outer-wall, or fence, like one that felt not the ground, or the steps he set his feet on; and before I had time to speak to him, he cries out to me, “O master!  O master!  O sorrow!  O bad!”—­“What’s the matter, Friday?” says I.  “O yonder, there,” says he, “one, two, three canoe; one, two, three!” By this way of speaking, I concluded there were six; but, on inquiry, I found it was but three.  “Well, Friday,” says I, “do not be frightened.”  So I heartened him up as well as I could:  however, I saw the poor fellow was most terribly scared; for nothing ran in his head but that they were come to look for him, and would cut him in pieces, and eat him; and the poor fellow trembled so, that I scarce knew what to do with him.  I comforted him as well as I could, and told him I was in as much danger as he, and that they would eat me as well as him.  “But,” says I, “Friday, we must resolve to fight them.  Can you fight, Friday!”—­“Me shoot,” says he; but there come many great number.”—­No matter for that,” said I, again; “our guns will fright them that we do not kill.”  So I asked him whether, if I resolved to defend him, he would defend me, and stand by me, and do just as I bid him.  He said, “Me die, when you bid die, master.”  So I went and fetched a good dram of rum and gave him; for I had been so good a husband of my rum, that I had a great deal left.  When he drank it, I made him take the two fowling-pieces, which we always carried, and loaded them with large swan-shot, as big as small pistol-bullets; then I took four muskets, and loaded them with two slugs, and five small bullets each; and my two pistols I loaded with a brace of bullets each; I hung my great sword, as usual, naked by my side, and gave Friday his hatchet.  When I had thus prepared myself, I took my perspective-glass, and went up to the side of the hill, to see what I could discover; and I found quickly, by my glass, that there were one and twenty savages, three prisoners, and three canoes; and that their whole business seemed to be the triumphant banquet upon these three human bodies; a barbarous feast indeed! but nothing more than, as I had observed, was usual with them.  I observed also, that they were landed, not where they had done when Friday made his escape, but nearer to my creek:  where the shore was low, and where a thick wood came almost close down to the