It was upon the hearing these guns, that they took down their masts and sails; and the sound coming from the windward, they resolved to lie by till morning.  Some time after this, hearing no more guns, they fired three muskets, one a considerable while after another; but these, the wind being contrary, we never heard.

Some time after that again, they were still more agreeably surprised with seeing our lights, and hearing the guns, which, as I have said, I caused to be fired all the rest of the night:  this set them to work with their oars to keep their boats ahead, at least that we might the sooner come up with them; and at last, to their inexpressible joy, they found we saw them.

It is impossible for me to express the several gestures, the strange ecstasies, the variety of postures, which these poor delivered people ran into, to express the joy of their souls at so unexpected a deliverance; grief and fear are easily described; sighs, tears, groans, and a very few motions of head and hands, make up the sum of its variety:  but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it; there were some in tears, some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, several singing, some laughing, more crying; many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting, several swooning, and ready to faint; and a few were crossing themselves and giving God thanks.

I would not wrong them neither; there might he many that were thankful afterward; but the passion was too strong for them at first, and they were not able to master it; they were thrown into ecstasies and a kind of frenzy, and so there were but a very few who were composed and serious in their joy.

Perhaps also the case may have some addition to it, from the particular circumstance of the nation they belonged to; I mean the French, whose temper is allowed to be more volatile, more passionate, and more sprightly, and their spirits more fluid, than of other nations.  I am not philosopher to determine the cause, but nothing I had ever seen before came up to it:  the ecstasies poor Friday, my trusty savage, was in, when he found his father in the boat, came the nearest to it; and the surprise of the master, and his two companions, whom I delivered from the two villains that set them on shore in the island, came a little way towards it; but nothing was to compare to this, either that I saw in Friday, or any where else in my life.