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

directed in my will; one-half of the produce being to himself, and the
other to be shipped to England.
In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and
keep up my plantation. Had I used half as much prudence to have looked
into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have
done and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so
prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probably views of a
thriving circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with
all its common hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to
expect particular misfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy
rather than my reason. And accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and
the cargo furnished, and all things done as by agreement by my
partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the (first)
of (September, 1659), being the same day eight year that I went from
my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their
authority, and the fool to my own interest.
Our ship was about 120 tons burthen, carried six guns and fourteen
men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on board no large
cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our trade with the
negroes - such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd trifles,
especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets, and the
like.
The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the
northward upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the
African coast, when they came about 10 or 12 degrees of northern
latitude, which, it seems, was the manner of their course in those
days. We had very good weather, only excessive hot, all the way upon
our own coast, till we came the height of Cape St. Augustino, from
whence, keeping farther off at sea, we lost sight of land, and steered
as if we was bound for the Isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our
course NE. by N., and leaving those isles on the east. In this
course we passed the line in about twelve days' time, and were, by our
last observation, in 7 degrees 22 minutes northern latitude, when a
violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge.
It began from the south-east, came about to the north-west, and then
settled into the north-east, from whence it blew in such a terrible
manner, that for twelve days together we could do nothing but drive,
and, scudding away before it, let it carry us wherever fate and the
fury of the winds directed; and during these twelve days I need not
say that I expected every day to be swallowed up, nor, indeed, did any
in the ship expect to save their lives.
In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our
men died of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard.
About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made
an observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about
11 degrees north latitude, but that he was 22 degrees of longitude
difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was
gotten upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond
the river Amazon, toward that of the River Orinoco, commonly called