Illness and Awakening — Robinson Crusoe

The earthquake has lifted the wreck. The forecastle stands at least six feet higher, the stern is thrown aside, and at low tide he can walk to a hold choked with sand. He gives up moving house and pulls the ship apart. Through May he saws beams, floats planks in on the flood, and levers iron free until he is ready to stop. A hookless line of rope-yarn takes a young dolphin. He dries fish in the sun, feels a roll of lead he cannot shift, and loses a tide to pigeon-hunting. What floats home is mostly timber, plus Brazil pork spoiled by salt and sand. By mid-June he has wood and iron for a boat, if he knew how to build one, and near a hundredweight of sheet lead.

Then he finds a tortoise, his first, and cooks it with threescore eggs, the best meat since he landed. The rain turns cold. Fever and a seven-hour ague follow. He can kill a goat and cannot stew it, for want of a pot. One day he cannot stand to fetch water, and he cries for pity until he sleeps. In the dream he is outside the wall again. A man comes down from a black cloud in a flame, spear ready, and the ground shakes. Crusoe is told that nothing yet has brought him to repentance, and that he is now to die.

Eight years at sea sit behind that voice, years in which he cannot remember looking towards God. Barley stirred him only while it seemed miraculous. The earthquake stirred him only while it moved. His father had said that this foolish step would cost him the blessing, and that he would have time to see it with nobody to help. He says those words have come to pass. He sets rum and water by the bed for the next fit, roasts three turtle eggs, and asks a blessing on meat for the first time he can recall. By a calm sea he asks why this was done to him, and the question turns into a list he cannot answer: Yarmouth Roads, the fight at Sallee, the beasts of Africa, the boat in which the rest drowned. He climbs the wall, lights the lamp, and opens a chest on tobacco and a Bible he has not wanted to read.

He chews the leaf, steeps more in rum, and leans into the smoke. The book falls open on a call in the day of trouble. He does not believe the island can be escaped. He kneels anyway, drinks the dose, and sleeps so deeply he may lose a day from his count. He wakes hungry. The ague fades, flickers, and by the 3rd of July is gone, though his limbs still convulse and strength is slow. He kneels to thank God for the illness ended, then reads each morning and night. The dream's demand for repentance meets words about a Prince and a Saviour who can give it, and he asks for that. Through the middle of the month he walks a little at a time with his gun, testing the strength coming back, and storm-rain begins to frighten him more than the rains of September and October.