In order to do this as intelligibly as I can, I must go back to thecircumstances in which I left the island, and the persons on it, ofwhom I am to speak. And first, it is necessary to repeat that Ihad sent away Friday's father and the Spaniard (the two whose livesI had rescued from the savages) in a large canoe to the main, as Ithen thought it, to fetch over the Spaniard's companions that heleft behind him, in order to save them from the like calamity thathe had been in, and in order to succour them for the present; andthat, if possible, we might together find some way for ourdeliverance afterwards. When I sent them away I had no visibleappearance of, or the least room to hope for, my own deliverance,any more than I had twenty years before - much less had I anyforeknowledge of what afterwards happened, I mean, of an Englishship coming on shore there to fetch me off; and it could not be buta very great surprise to them, when they came back, not only tofind that I was gone, but to find three strangers left