Chapter 30, Robinson Crusoe’s Lucky Day
Robinson Crusoe, a native of Yorkshire, England, was born in 1632 and is now forty-two years old.
This year marks the fifteenth year since he left human civilization and landed on an uninhabited island in the Atlantic Ocean.
However, although he lived alone on the island, the tenacious Robinson was not a savage and never gave up on himself.
Even without the encouragement of his supervisor and the burden of his family, in order to survive and to make life on the desert island more comfortable, he would work tirelessly to complete whatever he had to do. No matter how many times he failed, he would never give up. Get discouraged and give up.
After the ship ran aground on the rocks and all the sailors and companions were swept away by the waves, Robinson, the only survivor, first made a raft from the mast of the sunken ship, and transported the food, clothes, guns, ammunition, tools, etc. on the ship to the ship again and again. On the shore, we set up tents on the edge of the hill and settled down.
Then, he used sharpened wooden stakes to build a fence around the tent, dug a hole behind the tent to live, hunted game for food, drank water from the stream, and overcame the initial difficulties he encountered. Then, in order to make the cave more like a home, he used simple tools to make tables, chairs and other furniture, used animal skins to make clothes, and even made a foldable umbrella to keep out the rain and sun. In fact, Robinson did not master so many diverse skills at first, and his craftsmanship could even be said to be very clumsy. For example, in order to make a long shelf in the cave, he spent a full forty-two days making a wooden board. But after countless failures, he soon became more and more clever.
After initially settling down, he opened several crop fields on the island, planted barley and rice, made his own wooden mortars, pestles, and sieves, processed flour, and baked rough bread and snacks made from rice and wheat. Then he discovered a large natural orchard, built a hut and a farm there, and added oranges, lemons, fresh grapes and raisins to his diet.
In addition, in order to make life more convenient, he also made straw baskets and fired pottery. In order to save precious ammunition, he also tried to capture and tame wild goats and built sheep pens to breed them, thus ensuring the supply of mutton, goat milk, cream and cheese.
During this period, he suffered from malaria and was cured by using tobacco leaves soaked in wine. We encountered an earthquake, but we rebuilt our "home" after the earthquake.
At the same time, Robinson never gave up looking for a way to leave the island. He once cut down a big tree and spent nearly half a year building a giant canoe that could seat 24 people. However, the boat was too big and heavy to be dragged from the land to the sea, so he had to give up all his efforts. But Robinson was not discouraged and built another boat. He learned from the previous lessons and opened a canal for it in advance to facilitate the boat to the seaside.
Unfortunately, there were many rapids and dense reefs near this island. Robinson almost died when he sailed out to sea for the first time, and he almost escaped death before returning to land. After that, although he sometimes rode a canoe for recreation, he never dared to go too far from the shore or venture to distant lands, lest he would be inadvertently swept away by rapids, strong winds or other accidents. Or scrape it away, leaving you dead without a burial place.
As a result, his plan to build a boat to escape from the deserted island came to nothing, and he had to continue to live alone on the island with peace of mind.
Just like that, a long time passed by in a flash. Robinson has lived on the island for fifteen years and has become very accustomed to the way of life in this place.
In the past, when he went hunting everywhere or surveyed the environment on the island, he would feel miserable when he thought about his situation; when he thought about being trapped in the middle of these woods, valleys and beaches, in the uninhabited wilderness, he felt miserable. He felt like a prisoner, and the vast sea was the iron bars of the prison, and he would never be released from prison... When he thought about this, he was always worried. Even when he was at his most peaceful, this thought would come over him suddenly like a storm, causing him to wring his hands and wail like a child. Sometimes during labor, this thought would suddenly hit him, forcing him to sit down, sigh, stare at the ground, and remain motionless for an hour or two, but it was even more painful - because, If he can cry or vent it out in words, the distress will pass; after venting his sorrow, he will feel better.
If the situation continues like this, Mr. Robinson may soon lose his mind and have a mental breakdown, but fortunately, as a Christian, he still has the Bible as his final spiritual comfort...I don’t know why. From that time on, Robinson read the Bible every day and connected the words he read with his current situation to get comfort from it. Then, he began to learn to look more at the bright side of his life and less at the dark side of life; to think more about the enjoyment he had received and less about the things he lacked.
Then, he discovered how lucky he actually was - just imagine, without God's blessing, he should have been buried at the bottom of the sea with his companions a long time ago, instead of living a life of food and clothing on this desert island. . What would happen next if, with God's blessing, he failed to remove anything from the stranded shipwreck? Without guns and axes, he could not find any other food except turtles and possibly poisonous wild fruits on the beach. Even if you don't starve to death, you will definitely have to live like a savage. Even if you try to kill a goat or a bird, you can't disembowel it, skin it and cut it into pieces. You can only bite it with your teeth like a wild beast. , tore it off with his claws.
In short, after some thinking, he had a clear understanding of his situation and knew that he was living on this terrible desert island, far away from human habitation, with no hope of rescue. But once you find out that you can still live, you won't starve to death, and you won't be in danger of turning into a savage. All his worries disappeared. He began to live a carefree life again, doing various jobs wholeheartedly to maintain his survival.
With the passage of time, Robinson has greatly improved his living situation compared with the downturn when he first came to the island. Not only is life comfortable and there is no need to worry about starvation or cold, but the mood also becomes comfortable. Even the thought of escaping from the desert island gradually faded away - he wrote in his diary:
"...How merciful the Creator is to all the creatures He created. Even if they are in desperate situations, He is still so merciful. He can turn the suffering fate into sweetness. Even if we are imprisoned, we must praise Him. ! When I first came to this wilderness, I thought I was I must starve to death; and now, what a rich feast is before me! I have never used any tools in my life, but over time, using my labor, diligence and inventive talents, I gradually discovered that I can do anything. Do it.
I often read the Bible and put it into practice seriously. Coupled with God's grace on me, I gained a new understanding that I had never had before. The world is far away to me; I have no connection with it or any expectations of it. It can be said that I have no desire in this world. In short, I have nothing to do with the world anymore, and I will never have anything to do with it again. So I see the world as we see it after we leave this world: This is the place I once lived but am no longer here. Everything I have is enough for me to enjoy. I am the owner of this territory. If I want, I can make the king and emperor of this land that I occupy. I have no enemies or competitors to compete with me for power. I can produce a whole boatload of food, but that's of no use to me. I just need to produce enough food for me to eat. I have a lot of turtles, but I only need to eat one or two occasionally. I have enough wood to build a fleet of ships. I have enough grapes to make wine or raisins, and when I have a fleet of ships I can fill every ship. I can only use those things that work for me. I already have enough to eat, what else do I want? If there is too much prey and cannot be eaten, it must be eaten by dogs or insects; if there is too much food harvested, it will become moldy if it cannot be eaten; if the trees are cut down and not used, they will rot when lying on the ground, except for use as firewood for cooking food. , has no other use at all.
In short, knowledge and experience have made me understand that everything in the world is most valuable only when it is useful. If you accumulate a lot of anything, you should give it to others; the most we can enjoy is the part we can use, and more is useless. Even the most greedy, money-hungry man in the world, in my current position, would be cured of his greediness, because I am so rich now that I simply don’t know what to do with my wealth. I no longer have any greedy desires in my heart... I would rather spend the rest of my life here until the last moment of my life, just like my old dog who died without a cause... The only thing I lack is that there is no one to associate with, nothing else There is no shortage of..."
——Living on an island far away from the crowd and isolated from the world made Robinson eventually become a hermit who believed in God.
Since ancient times, human beings have been social creatures. When a human being has to be isolated from the world for some reason, he will naturally try to imagine that some supernatural force is protecting him and taking care of him, so as to avoid The mind is destroyed by the terrible loneliness - the shepherds in the remote wilderness believe in God far more than the urban residents, and the Tibetans on the plateau have amazingly devout faith in the Buddha. It is all for this reason.
——Loneliness and turmoil are excellent catalysts for the rise of religion.
If the isolation of this isolated island from the world continues, Robinson may really be like those "sitting" hermits and prophets, calmly ending his life in the midst of his understanding of life and praise to God. life.
However, at this moment, his life changed.
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As mentioned before, Robinson built a small boat on the island, but due to the lack of suitable wood in the seaside cave, the boat was not located in his seaside cave, but anchored at the other end of the island. He tried to bring the boat over several times, but was frightened back by the rapids and wind and waves. So every time he went to sea for recreation or fishing, he had to travel long distances to the boat docking place.
However, at noon one day in the fifteenth year after he landed on the desert island, Robinson was walking along the beach to the other end of the island to see his ship, when he suddenly found a person's footprints on the beach: that was a The footprints of bare feet are clearly imprinted on the beach!
This simply frightened Robinson - he had lived on this island for fifteen years, but he had never seen a human being!
So, looking at the footprints, he stood there blankly, as if he had been hit by a bolt from the blue, or as if he had seen a ghost in broad daylight. He first listened carefully and then looked around, but he heard nothing and saw nothing. Then I ran to the high ground, looked into the distance, and ran back and forth to the beach several times, but still to no avail. He ran to the footprints to see if it was his imagination. However, a footprint is a footprint, and there is just one, there is no doubt about it. The toes and heels are a complete footprint.
But how did these footprints stay here? Robinson had no way of knowing or guessing. This made him upset, like a mentally disturbed person, his mind was full of random thoughts, and then he ran towards his cave on the seaside, running all the way without his feet touching the ground, but he was extremely frightened in his heart. He turned around to see if anyone was catching up behind him. Even a clump of small trees or a dead tree trunk in the distance would make him suspicious, thinking it was a human being. Along the way, he was really frightened, and all kinds of hallucinations appeared in his mind. In the hallucinations, all kinds of absurd ideas and countless bizarre delusions appeared, which were simply difficult to describe. Finally, Robinson got into his cave under the cliff by the sea. It seemed as if someone was really chasing him. He was extremely frightened. A frightened hare escaped into his hay nest, and a fox escaped into the cave. There was no one in his own crypt who was as worried and uneasy as he was. So much so that he was so frightened that he trembled all over, as if he had malaria.
Robinson thought about this unexpected discovery for a long time, and did not close his eyes all night long - he thought: since this small island has pleasant scenery, rich products, and is not far from the American continent, it is impossible for him to be like before. As you can imagine, it has never been visited since ancient times. Although there are no residents on the island, it is entirely possible for ships from the opposite mainland to come to the island from time to time.
So, does this footprint mean someone has invaded his island? Is the other party a European sailor in distress? Or the nearby Native Americans? Did they discover their boat and farm? Will they come to attack here? Will he destroy all his grains, take away all his tame goats, and finally let him starve to death... It wasn't until the morning sun rose again that he fell asleep due to excessive thinking and mental exhaustion. .
Alas, the unpredictable fate makes life seem so bizarre! How changeable are people's emotions under different circumstances! What some people love today is often what they will hate tomorrow; what they pursue today is often what they will avoid tomorrow; what they hope for today is often what they fear tomorrow, and even make them tremble with fear. And now Robinson is a vivid example.
In the past, he felt that his greatest pain was being abandoned by human society, being alone, surrounded by the ocean, isolated from the world, being demoted and living a lonely life. It was as if God had decided that he was not good enough to associate with human beings or interact with other people.
He felt at that time that if he could see someone, it would be no less than coming back from the dead. It would be the greatest happiness that God could give him. This kind of happiness would be second only to God's forgiveness of his sins in the world. His sins brought him to heaven. But now, whenever he suspected that he might see someone, he would shudder; whenever he saw a human figure, and saw the footprints left by someone on the island lying there silently, he wished there was a hole in the ground for him to Drill down...maybe this is the so-called "island syndrome"!
He would just speculate and think wildly, become suspicious, and then reflect and meditate. Suddenly one day, Mr. Robinson's mind opened up and he felt that maybe all this was his imagination. That footprint may have been left on the beach by himself when he disembarked from the boat.
This thought made Robinson a little happy, and he felt more settled than ever before, and tried his best to convince himself that it was indeed his hallucination, and that it was just the footprints he left. Because, since he can get on the boat from there, he can also get off the boat and go ashore from there. What's more, he himself couldn't determine where he had walked and where he had never walked. If it turns out that they are just his own footprints, wouldn't he become a big fool, just like those fools who make up scary stories about ghosts and ghosts, but instead of frightening others, they frighten themselves!
Next, Robinson plucked up the courage and wanted to go outside to have a look - he had not left the cave for three days and three nights, and his family was almost out of food, with only some barley cakes and water left. In addition, the goats in the sheepfold should also be fed and milked. This work has always been his pastime in the evening (for specific ways of pastime, please imagine based on the previous experience of classmate A Xu... This matter is said to have happened in ancient times. used to be quite common in the UK).
Even so, on the way to feed the goats and milk the goats, Robinson was still always worried. He looked back behind him every step of the way, always ready to drop the basket and run for his life. However, he ran to the sheepfold for two or three days in a row and saw nothing, so he became a little bolder and thought that maybe nothing special happened this year, it was all his imagination.
But he still couldn't convince himself that what he saw on that beach must be his own footprints, unless he went to the beach again to see the footprints in person and compare them with his own feet. Is it the same size? Only in this way can he truly feel at ease.
Therefore, after a lot of fighting between heaven and man in his heart, Robinson finally put on his flintlock gun, carefully left his cave under the seaside cliff, and walked along the old road again... …Then I was deeply shocked:
What did he see on the beach where human footprints had been found a few days ago?
one person!
A white woman!
A black-haired Caucasian woman!
A beautiful black-haired Caucasian woman! !
A beautiful black-haired white woman who was naked from head to toe, like Eve when she was born in the Garden of Eden! ! ! As a result, Robinson suddenly felt a stream of heat rushing from his crotch to his temples, and his mind seemed to explode with a "buzz"!