The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe

June 24.

 

Much better. The beast did run and hunt this night, and kill'd one of the small hares and a goat. In my youthful experience, it had oft seem'd to me that the mantle of the beast could clear away many such illnesses and injuries, or lessen them at best. I bethought myself that I may have help for my sickness after all.

 

June 25.

 

An ague. The fit held me seven hours. Cold fit, and hot, with faint sweats after it. It would seem my help, that is to say, the beast, has left and my health is taken with it.

 

 

 

 

 

The dream lord, my revelation,

 

my protections

 

 

June 26.

 

Better. Having no victuals to eat, took my gun, but found myself very weak. However, I kill’d a she-goat and, with much difficulty, got it home and broiled some of it and ate. I would fain have stewed it and made some broth, but had no pot.

 

June 27.

 

The ague again, so violent I lay a-bed all day and neither ate nor drank. I was ready to perish for thirst, so weak I had not strength to stand up or to get myself any water to drink.

 

Prayed to God again, but was light-headed. When I was not, I was so ignorant I knew not what to say. I suppose I did nothing else for two or three hours till, the fit wearing off, I fell asleep and did not wake till far in the night. When I awoke, I found myself much refreshed but weak and exceeding thirsty. However, as I had no water in my whole habitation, I was forced to lie till morning, and went to sleep again. In this second sleep I had this terrible dream.

 

I thought I was sitting on the ground on the outside of my wall, where I sat when the storm blew after the earthquake, and I saw a thing rise from the sea beneath a great black cloud and light upon the shore. He, for I somehow knew it to be male, was all over as dark as pitch and projected from him a terrible wrongness, so I could but just bear to look towards him. His countenance was most inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe, with a beard of thick ropes of flesh, like those of a cuttel fish, and cold eyes that bit at the skin like winter wind. When he stepped upon the shore with his broad feet the island trembled, just as it had done before in the earthquake, and all the air looked, to my apprehension, as if it had been fill’d with flashes of fire.

 

He had no sooner lighted upon the shore but his wrongness spread out across the island as ripples spread across a pool of water, and every hill became changed and every stone black and unnatural. He moved forward towards me, and he did tower so high he looked down upon me and seem'd to cover leagues with each step. When he came to a rising ground, still enormous at some distance, he spoke to me, or I heard a voice so terrible it is impossible to express the terror of it. All I can say I understood, was this:

 

"Robinson Crusoe. There you are. Seeing all these things have not brought thee to my service, now thou shalt die."

 

At which words he lifted up his great and terrible hand to kill me. A terrible howl filled the air, and it was somehow made known to me, as is the way of dreams, that this was the beast, which also fear'd this great dark lord, but rally'd against him as well. At this point I start'd awake, though my heart did race in terror, and for some time I could not believe the dream was not a true thing I had remembered.

 

No one that shall ever read this account will expect I should be able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible vision. I mean, even while it was a dream, I even dreamed of those horrors. Nor is it any more possible to describe the impression that remained upon my mind when I awaked and found it was but a dream.

 

I had, alas! no divine knowledge. What I had received by the good instruction of my father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series of seafaring wickedness and a constant conversation with none but such as were, like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree. I do not remember I had, in all that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking upward towards God or inward towards a reflection upon my own ways. A certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or consciousness of evil, had overwhelmed me. I was all the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can be supposed to be, not having the least sense either of the fear of God in danger or of thankfulness to him in deliverances.

 

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