I had now been here so long, that many things which I brought on shore for my help were either quite gone, or very much wasted, and near spent.

My ink, as I observed, had been gone for some time, all but a very little, which I eked out with water, a little and a little, till it was so pale, it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper.  As long as it lasted, I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on which any remarkable thing happened to me:  and, first, by casting up times past, I remember that there was a strange concurrence of days in the various providences which befel me, and which, if I had been superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.

First, I had observed, that the same day that I broke away from my father and my friends, and ran away to Hull, in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man of war, and made a slave:  the same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of the ship in Yarmouth Roads, that same day-year afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in the boat:  and the same day of the year I was born on, viz. the 30th of September, that same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was cast on shore in this island:  so that my wicked life and my solitary life began both on one day.

The next thing to my ink being wasted, was that of my bread, I mean the biscuit which I brought out of the ship; this I had husbanded to the last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a day for above a year; and yet I was quite without bread for near a year before I got any corn of my own; and great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all, the getting it being, as has been already observed, next to miraculous.

My clothes, too, began to decay mightily:  as to linen, I had none for a great while, except some chequered shirts which I found in the chests of the other seamen, and which I carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no clothes on but a shirt; and it was a very great help to me that I had, among all the men’s clothes of the ship, almost three dozen of shirts.  There were also, indeed, several thick watch-coats of the seamen’s which were left, but they were too hot to wear:  and though it is true that the weather was so violently hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked, no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not, nor could I abide the thought of it, though, I was all alone.  The reason why I could not go quite naked was, I could not bear the heat of the sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes on; nay, the very heat frequently blistered my skin:  whereas, with a shirt on, the air itself made some motion, and whistling under the shirt, was twofold cooler than without it.  No more could I ever bring myself to go out in the heat of the sun without a cap or hat; the heat of the sun beating with such violence as it does in that place, would give me the head-ach presently, by darting so directly upon my head, without a cap or hat on, so that I could not bear it; whereas, if I put on my hat, it would presently go away.