Chapter 29
Halfway through my work on the canoe, my fourth year on the island passed. I was removed from the world, yet I had enough to live on and I was content.
Some changes had occurred in that time. I had run out of ink completely and my clothes were decaying with use.
Instead I began using the skins of the animals I had killed. I made myself a cap and a pair of clothes entirely out of those skins. They kept me cool in the heat and preserved me from the heavy rain. But the clothes weren’t enough. I also needed an umbrella for the same purposes. It took me a while but I succeeded in making one.
I continued living like that for the next 5 years. Nothing curious happened in that time. I kept on planting barley and rice. I continued drying grapes to make raisins. All my activities remained the same.
It was some time after that I made myself another canoe. It was smaller and easier to move. Although it was ready and set in water, I could not use that canoe to go in the ocean. It could only serve me to travel around the island with it. Before I made a sail, I had put food, water and tools in it to prepare for the trip ahead.
It was the 6th of November on the sixth year of my stay on the island that I started this voyage. I faced danger as soon as I set out. I had to go round some rocks far out at sea, and then struggle against a very strong underwater current, but I finally managed to continue my trip round the island.
Finally I found a small river going further into the land where I harbored my boat and went to explore this side of the island on foot. It was not far from where I had been on my previous journey. I even succeeded in finding my way back to my hut, where everything was just as I had left it. I was so tired from the trip that I fell asleep and was woken up by someone calling my name:
“Robin Crusoe, where are you? Poor Robin!”
I was terrified at first, but then I saw my parrot Poll on top of the hedge. He had learnt the phrases I had repeated to myself so many times. Now he was saying them with the same intonation I had used. I was surprised to find the parrot here, because I had left it in the fortification. Still, I was happy to hear someone talk to me.
I left the boat there and returned home with the parrot.