CHAPTER 27 – ENGLISHMEN

We give them food and four guns in case the cannibals want to attack them again. Then they take the canoe and they go away.

Two days pass when something unusual happens.

Friday wakes me up at 6 in the morning. “Are they here?” I ask Friday. He says, “No. But somebody else is here. There is a boat at sea.”

I go to the top of the nearest hill. I see the boat. It’s clear that these people are not the friends from Friday’s island. The boat comes from a different direction. I also see a ship. I know this shape. The ship is English.

I’m confused. It’s true that I’m happy when I see Englishmen after twenty-seven years on the island. But I’m also worried. The island isn’t near ways of English ships. I don’t remember any storm yesterday. So, why are they here? Maybe, the men are pirates. Maybe, they want to hide something on the island.

I decide to be very careful. Friday and I stay in the forest and we watch them. The boat comes to the beach and I count eleven men. Soon, I see that they are all Englishmen.

Three men have hands tied together. The eight other men take them to the beach. Two prisoners are calm, but the third prisoner tries to say something. He looks very scared. He asks the men in the boat for something.

When Friday sees this, he turns to me and he tells me that Englishmen also eat people.

I tell him that they definitely don’t plan to eat them. I think that they want to shoot them.

After some time, we see that this isn’t their plan. The men from the boat start to explore the island. The three tied prisoners sit on the beach with two men as guards. The prisoners look very sad. Their situation is bad.

Low tide comes soon. The level of the sea is low. Their boat is on the sand. They can’t move the boat. I hear them say, “We have to wait and leave with the next high tide.” This give us some hours.

Friday and I stay in the forest until dark. Then I see that the men who stand guard start to sleep. The three prisoners sit under a tree quite close to us. It looks like they are also quite far from the other sailors. We can come closer to them.

When we are very close to them, I speak quietly to them. We are still behind the trees and they can’t see us.

When they hear my voice, they can’t believe that somebody speaks English to them from the dark forest.

“What is that?” asks one of the men.

“I hear something. I hear a tree speak,” answers the other. “But it’s impossible. A tree can’t speak English.”

“Yes, you hear something but it’s not a tree,” I say quietly. “My name is Robinson Crusoe. I’m an Englishman. I live on this island. I can help you if you tell me who you are.”

After the first shocking moment, one man answers my question. He is the captain of the ship. But after a rebellion on the ship, the captain, his assistant and a passenger are prisoners. The other sailors want to leave them on the island.

The captain says, “The truth is that there are only two dangerous sailors who control the others in the group. Eighty percent of them are still loyal to me. If the leaders are caught, the rest can return under my control.”

WORDS FROM CHAPTER 27