"Children's Books - Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Children's Books)

But we found afterwards that we need not take such pains for
water, for a little higher up the creek where we were we found the
water fresh when the tide was out, which flowed but a little way up;
so we filled our jars, and feasted on the hare we had killed, and
prepared to go on our way, having seen no footsteps of any human
creatures in that part of the country.
As I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that
the Islands of the Canaries, and the Cape de Verde Islands also, lay
not far off from the coast. But as I had no instruments to take an
observation to know what latitude we were in, and did not exactly
know, or at least remember, what latitude they were in, I knew not
where to look for them, or when to stand off to sea towards them;
otherwise I might now easily have found some of these islands. But
my hope was, that if I stood along this coast till I came to that part
where the English traded, I should find some of their vessels upon
their usual design of trade, that would relieve and take us in.
By the best of my calculation, that place where I now was must be
that country which, lying between the Emperor of Morocco's dominions
and the negroes, lies waste and uninhabited, except by wild beasts;
the negroes having abandoned it and gone farther south for fear of the
Moors, and the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting, by reason of
its barrenness; and indeed both forsaking it because of the prodigious
number of tigers, lions, leopards, and other furious creatures which
harbor there; so that the Moors use it for their hunting only, where
they go like an army, two or three thousand men at a time; and
indeed for near a hundred miles together upon this coast we saw
nothing but a waste uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing
but howlings and roarings of wild beasts by night.
Once or twice in the daytime I thought I saw the Pico of being the
high top of the Mountain Teneriffe in the Canaries, and had a great
mind to venture out in hopes of reaching thither; but having tried
twice, I was forced in again by contrary winds, the sea also going too
high for my little vessel; so I resolved to pursue my first design,
and keep along the shore.
Several times I was obliged to land for fresh water after we had
left this place; and once in particular, being early in the morning,
we came to an anchor under a little point of land which was pretty
high; and the tide beginning to flow, we lay still to go farther in.
Xury, whose eyes were more about them than it seems mine were, calls
softly to me, and tells me that we had best go farther off the
shore; "For," says he, "look, yonder lies a dreadful monster on the
side of that hillock fast asleep." I looked where he pointed, and
saw a dreadful monster indeed, for it was a terrible great lion that
lay on the side of the shore, under the shade of a piece of the hill
that hung as it were a little over him. "Xury," says I, "you shall
go on shore and kill him." Xury looked frighted, and said, "Me kill!
he eat me at one mouth;" one mouthful he meant. However, I said no
more to the boy, but bade him lie still, and I took our biggest gun,
which was almost musketbore, and loaded it with a good charge of
powder, and with two slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another