However, I wore out a year and three months more before I ever saw any more of the savages, and then I found them again, as I shall soon observe.  It is true, they might have been there once or twice, but either they made no stay, or, at least, I did not hear them; but in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four-and-twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them, of which in its place.

The perturbation of my mind, during this fifteen or sixteen months interval, was very great; I slept unquiet, dreamed always frightful dreams, and often started out of my sleep in the night; in the day great troubles overwhelmed my mind; in the night I dreamed often of killing the savages, and the reasons why I might justify the doing of it.  But to wave all this for awhile, it was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calendar would reckon, for I marked all upon, the post still; I say, it was on the sixteenth of May that it blew a great storm of wind all day, with a great deal of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night was after it:  I know not what was the particular occasion of it; but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as I thought, fired at sea.

This was, to be sure, a surprise of a quite different nature from any I had met with before; for the notions this put into my thoughts were quite of another kind:  I started up in the greatest haste imaginable; and in a trice clapped up my ladder to the middle place of the rock, and pulled it after me, and mounting it the second time, got to the top of the hill; that very moment a flash of fire bade me listen for a second gun, which accordingly in about half a moment I heard, and by the sound knew that it was from that part of the sea where I was driven out with the current in my boat.

I immediately considered that this must be some ship in distress, and that they had some comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these guns for signals of distress, and to obtain help.  I had this presence of mind at that minute as to think, that though I could not help them, it may be they might help me; so I brought together all the dry wood I could get at hand, and making a good handsome pile, I set it on fire upon the hill; the wood was dry, and blazed freely, and though the wind blew very hard, yet it burnt fairly out, so that I was certain, if there was any such thing as a ship, they must need see it, and no doubt they did; for as soon as ever my fire blazed up, I heard another gun, and after that several others, all from the same quarter.  I plied my fire all night long, till day broke; and when it was broad day, and the air cleared up, I saw something at a great distance at sea, full east of the island, whether a sail, or an hull, I could not distinguish, no not with my glasses, the distance was so great, and the weather still something hazy also; at least it was so out at sea.