Defoe's new adventures of robinson crusoe. The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Nikolai Nikolaevich Nosov

Dunno on the Moon

Chapter first

How Znayka defeated Professor Zvezdochkin

Two and a half years have passed since Dunno traveled to the Sunny City. Although for you and me this is not so much, but for little runts, two and a half years is a very long time. Having listened to the stories of Dunno, Knopochka and Pachkuli Pestrenky, many shorties also made a trip to the Sunny City, and when they returned, they decided to make some improvements at home. Flower City has changed since then so much that it is now unrecognizable. Many new, large and very beautiful houses appeared in it. According to the design of the architect Vertibutylkin, even two revolving buildings were built on Kolokolchikov Street. One is five-story, tower-type, with a spiral descent and a swimming pool around (by going down the spiral descent, one could dive straight into the water), the other is six-story, with swinging balconies, a parachute tower and a ferris wheel on the roof. A lot of cars, spiral vehicles, tube planes, aerohydromotos, tracked all-terrain vehicles and other various vehicles appeared on the streets.

And that's not all, of course. Residents of the Sunny City learned that the short guys from the Flower City were engaged in construction, and came to their aid: they helped them build several so-called industrial enterprises. According to the design of the engineer Klyopka, a large clothing factory was built, which produced a wide variety of clothes, from rubber bras to winter fur coats made of synthetic fiber. Now no one had to slog with a needle to sew the most ordinary trousers or jacket. At the factory, everything was done for short machines. Finished products, as in Sunny City, were distributed to stores, and there everyone took what they needed. All the concerns of the factory workers boiled down to coming up with new styles of clothes and making sure that nothing was produced that the public did not like.

Everyone was very pleased. The only one who suffered in this case was Donut. When Donut saw that he could now buy any thing he might need from the store, he began to wonder why he needed all that pile of suits that had accumulated in his home. All these costumes were also out of fashion, and they could not be worn anyway. Choosing a darker night, Donut tied his old suits in a huge knot, secretly took them out of the house and drowned them in the Cucumber River, and instead of them he got himself new suits from the stores. It ended up that his room turned into some kind of warehouse for ready-made clothes. The suits were in his closet, on the closet, on the table, under the table, on bookshelves, hanging on the walls, on the backs of chairs and even under the ceiling, on strings.

Such an abundance of woolen products in the house infested moths, and to prevent them from gnawing the suits, Donut had to poison them daily with mothballs, from which there was such a strong smell in the room that the unusual little man was knocked off his feet. The donut itself smelled of this stupefying smell, but he got so used to it that he even stopped noticing it. For others, however, the smell was very noticeable. As soon as Donut came to visit someone, the owners immediately began to feel dizzy from stupor. The donut was immediately driven away and all the windows and doors were quickly opened wide to ventilate the room, otherwise you could faint or go crazy. For the same reason, Donut didn’t even have the opportunity to play with the shorties in the yard. As soon as he went out into the yard, everyone around them began to spit and, holding their noses with their hands, rushed to run away from him in different directions without looking back. Nobody wanted to hang out with him. Needless to say, this was terribly offensive for Donut, and he had to take all the costumes he didn’t need to the attic.

However, that was not the main thing. The main thing was that Znayka also visited the Sunny City. There he met the little scientists Fuchsia and Herring, who at that time were preparing their second flight to the Moon. Znayka also got involved in the work of building a space rocket and, when the rocket was ready, he made an interplanetary journey with Fuchsia and Herring. Having arrived on the Moon, our brave travelers examined one of the small lunar craters in the area of the lunar Sea of Clarity, visited the cave that was located in the center of this crater, and made observations of changes in gravity. On the Moon, as is known, gravity is much less than on Earth, and therefore observations of changes in gravity are of great scientific importance. Having spent about four hours on the moon. Znayka and his companions were forced to quickly set off on the return journey, since their air supplies were running out. Everyone knows that there is no air on the Moon and, in order not to suffocate, you should always take a supply of air with you. In a condensed form, of course.

Returning to Flower City, Znayka talked a lot about his journey. His stories were of great interest to everyone, and especially to the astronomer Steklyashkin, who had observed the Moon more than once through a telescope. Using his telescope, Steklyashkin was able to see that the surface of the Moon was not flat, but mountainous, and many of the mountains on the Moon were not like those on Earth, but for some reason were round, or rather, ring-shaped. Scientists call these ring mountains lunar craters, or circuses. To understand what such a lunar circus, or crater, looks like, imagine a huge circular field, twenty, thirty, fifty, or even a hundred kilometers across, and imagine that this huge circular field is surrounded by an earthen rampart or mountain only two or three kilometers high , - so you get a lunar circus, or a crater. There are thousands of such craters on the Moon. There are small ones - about two kilometers, but there are also gigantic ones - up to one hundred and forty kilometers in diameter.

Many scientists are interested in the question of how lunar craters were formed and where they came from. In Sunny City, all the astronomers even quarreled among themselves, trying to resolve this complex issue, and were divided into two halves. One half claims that the lunar craters came from volcanoes, the other half says that the lunar craters are traces of the fall of large meteorites. The first half of astronomers are therefore called followers of the volcanic theory or simply volcanists, and the second - followers of the meteorite theory or meteorites.

Znayka, however, did not agree with either the volcanic or meteorite theory. Even before traveling to the Moon, he created his own theory of the origin of lunar craters. Once, together with Steklyashkin, he observed the Moon through a telescope, and it struck him that the lunar surface was very similar to the surface of a well-baked pancake with its spongy holes. After that, Znayka often went to the kitchen and watched the pancakes being baked. He noticed that while the pancake is liquid, its surface is completely smooth, but as it heats up in the frying pan, bubbles of heated steam begin to appear on its surface. Having appeared on the surface of the pancake, the bubbles burst, as a result of which shallow holes are formed on the pancake, which remain when the dough is properly baked and loses its viscosity.

Znayka even wrote a book in which he wrote that the surface of the Moon was not always hard and cold as it is now. Once upon a time, the Moon was a fiery liquid, that is, heated to a molten state, a ball. Gradually, however, the surface of the Moon cooled and became no longer liquid, but viscous, like dough. It was still very hot from the inside, so hot gases burst to the surface in the form of huge bubbles. Having reached the surface of the Moon, these bubbles, of course, burst. But while the surface of the Moon was still quite liquid, the traces of the bursting bubbles were delayed and disappeared, leaving no trace, just as bubbles on water during rain leave no trace. But

Robinson Crusoe - 2

Constituting the second and last part of his life, and a fascinating account of his travels in three parts of the world, written by himself

The popular proverb: “What goes to the cradle, goes to the grave” found full justification in the story of my life. If we take into account my thirty years of trials, the many varied hardships I have experienced, which fell to the lot of probably only a very few, the seven years of my life spent in peace and contentment, and finally my old age - if we remember that I have experienced the life of an average class in all its forms and found out which of them can most easily bring complete happiness to a person - then, it seemed, one would think that the natural inclination towards vagrancy, as I already said, which took possession of me from the very moment I was born, should would have weakened, its volatile elements would have evaporated or at least thickened, and that at the age of 61 I should have had a desire for a settled life and kept me from adventures that threatened my life and my condition.
Moreover, for me there was no motive that usually prompts me to go on long journeys: I had nothing to achieve wealth, there was nothing to look for. If I had gained ten thousand pounds sterling more, I would not have become richer, since I already had quite enough for myself and for those whom I needed to provide for. At the same time, my capital apparently increased, since, not having a large family, I could not even spend all my income, unless I began to spend money on the maintenance of many servants, carriages, entertainment and the like, about which I had no idea and for which I did not feel the slightest inclination. Thus, all I could do was sit quietly, use what I had acquired and observe the constant increase in my wealth.
However, all this had no effect on me and could not suppress my desire to wander, which positively developed in me into a chronic illness. I had a particularly strong desire to take another look at my plantations on the island and at the colony that I had left on it. Every night I saw my island in my dreams and dreamed about it for days on end. This thought hovered above all the others, and my imagination worked it out so diligently and intensely that I even talked about it in my sleep. In a word, nothing could knock the intention of going to the island out of my head; it broke out so often in my speeches that it became boring to talk to me; I could not talk about anything else: all my conversations boiled down to the same thing; I'm boring everyone and I noticed it myself.
I have often heard from sensible people that all sorts of stories about ghosts and spirits arise as a result of the fervor of the imagination and the intense work of the imagination, that no spirits and ghosts exist, etc. According to them, people, recalling their past conversations with the dead friends, imagine them so vividly that in some exceptional cases they are able to imagine that they see them, talk to them and receive answers from them, whereas in reality there is nothing of the kind, and all this is only imaginary to them.
To this day, I myself don’t know whether ghosts exist, whether people appear differently after their death, and whether such stories have a more serious basis than nerves, the delirium of a free mind and a disordered imagination, but I know that my imagination has often brought me to this point. that it seemed to me as if I was again on the island near my castle, as if the old Spaniard, Friday’s father and the mutinous sailors whom I had left on the island were standing in front of me. It seemed to me that I was talking to them and seeing them as clearly as if they were actually before my eyes. Often I myself felt terrified - my imagination painted all these pictures so vividly. One day I dreamed with astonishing vividness that the first Spaniard and Friday's father were telling me about the vile deeds of three pirates, how these pirates tried to barbarously kill all the Spaniards and how they set fire to the entire stock of provisions laid aside by the Spaniards in order to moderate their hunger.

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Daniel Defoe
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE,
forming the second and last part of his life, and a fascinating account of his travels in three parts of the world, written by himself

* * *

Popular proverb: as goes to the cradle, goes to the grave I found complete justification in the history of my life. If we take into account my thirty years of trials, the many varied hardships I have experienced, which fell to the lot of probably only a very few, the seven years of my life spent in peace and contentment, and finally my old age - if we remember that I have experienced the life of an average class in all its forms and found out which of them can most easily bring complete happiness to a person - then, it seemed, one would think that the natural inclination towards vagrancy, as I already said, which took possession of me from the very moment I was born, should would have weakened, its volatile elements would have evaporated or at least thickened, and that at the age of 61 I should have had a desire for a settled life and kept me from adventures that threatened my life and my condition.

Moreover, for me there was no motive that usually prompts me to go on long journeys: I had nothing to achieve wealth, there was nothing to look for. If I had gained ten thousand pounds sterling more, I would not have become richer, since I already had quite enough for myself and for those whom I needed to provide for. At the same time, my capital apparently increased, since, not having a large family, I could not even spend all my income, unless I began to spend the money on the maintenance of many servants, carriages, entertainment and the like, which I do not mention. had no idea and for which I did not feel the slightest inclination. Thus, all I could do was sit quietly, use what I had acquired and observe the constant increase in my wealth.

However, all this had no effect on me and could not suppress my desire to wander, which positively developed in me into a chronic illness. I had a particularly strong desire to take another look at my plantations on the island and at the colony that I had left on it. Every night I saw my island in my dreams and dreamed about it for days on end. This thought hovered above all others, and my imagination worked it out so diligently and intensely that I even talked about it in my sleep. In a word, nothing could knock the intention of going to the island out of my head; it broke out so often in my speeches that it became boring to talk to me; I could not talk about anything else: all my conversations boiled down to the same thing; I'm boring everyone and I noticed it myself.

I have often heard from sensible people that all sorts of stories about ghosts and spirits arise as a result of the ardor of the imagination and the intense work of the imagination, that no spirits and ghosts exist, etc. According to them, people, recalling their past conversations with dead friends, they imagine them so vividly that in some exceptional cases they are able to imagine that they see them, talk to them and receive answers from them, whereas in reality there is nothing of the kind, and all this is only imaginary to them.

To this day, I myself don’t know whether ghosts exist, whether people appear differently after their death, and whether such stories have a more serious basis than nerves, the delirium of a free mind and a disordered imagination, but I know that my imagination has often brought me to this point. that it seemed to me as if I was again on the island near my castle, as if the old Spaniard, Friday’s father and the mutinous sailors whom I had left on the island were standing in front of me. It seemed to me that I was talking to them and seeing them as clearly as if they were actually before my eyes. Often I myself felt terrified - my imagination painted all these pictures so vividly. One day I dreamed with astonishing vividness that the first Spaniard and Friday's father were telling me about the vile deeds of three pirates, how these pirates tried to barbarously kill all the Spaniards and how they set fire to the entire stock of provisions laid aside by the Spaniards in order to moderate their hunger. I had never heard of anything like this, and yet all of this was factually true. In a dream, this appeared to me with such clarity and plausibility that until the moment when I actually saw my colony, it was impossible to convince me that all this was not true. And how indignant and indignant I was in my dream, listening to the complaints of the Spaniard, what a harsh trial I inflicted on the guilty, interrogated them and ordered all three to be hanged. How much truth there was in all this will become clear in due course. I will only say that, although I do not know how I got to this in a dream and what inspired such assumptions in me, there was a lot of truth in them. I cannot say that my dream was correct in all the details, but in general there was so much truth in it, the vile and base behavior of these three scoundrels was such that the similarity with reality turned out to be striking, and I actually had to punish them severely. Even if I hanged them, I would have acted justly and would have been right before the law of God and man. But back to my story. I lived like this for several years. For me there were no other pleasures, no pleasant pastime, no entertainment, except dreams of the island; my wife, seeing that my thoughts were occupied with him alone, told me one evening that, in her opinion, a voice from above was heard in my soul, commanding me to go again to the island. The only obstacle to this was, according to her, my responsibilities to my wife and children. She said that she could not allow the thought of separation from me, but since she was sure that if she had died, I would have gone to the island first and that this had already been decided up there, she did not want to be a hindrance to me. And therefore, if I really consider it necessary and have already decided to go... - then she noticed that I was listening carefully to her words and looking closely at her; which confused her and she stopped. I asked her why she didn’t finish the story and asked her to continue. But I noticed that she was too excited and that there were tears in her eyes. “Tell me, dear,” I began, “do you want me to go?” “No,” she answered affectionately, “I am far from wishing for it. But if you decide to go, then I’d rather go with you than be a hindrance to you. Although I think that at your age and in your position it is too risky to think about this,” she continued with tears in her eyes, “but since it is already destined to be so, I will not leave you. If this is the will of heaven, there is no point in resisting. And if heaven wants you to go to the island, then it also shows me that it is my duty to go with you or to arrange it so that I do not serve as an obstacle for you.”

My wife's tenderness sobered me up somewhat; Having reflected on my course of action, I curbed my passion for travel and began to reason with myself what meaning it could have for a sixty-year-old man, behind whom lay a life full of so many hardships and hardships and ending so happily - what meaning, I say, could have for such a person to go out again in search of adventure and abandon himself to the will of chance, which only young people and the poor go to meet?

I also thought about the new obligations I had assumed - that I had a wife and a child and that my wife was carrying another child under her heart - that I had everything that life could give me, and that I did not the need to risk oneself for money. I told myself that I was already in my declining years and it was more fitting for me to think about the fact that I would soon have to part with everything I had acquired, rather than about increasing my wealth. I thought about my wife's words that this is the will of heaven and that therefore I must to go to the island, but personally I was not at all sure about this. Therefore, after much thought, I began to struggle with my imagination and ended up reasoning with myself, as probably everyone can do in similar cases, if they only want to. In a word, I suppressed my desires; I overcame them with the help of arguments of reason, which, in my position at that time, could have been given a lot. I especially tried to direct my thoughts to other subjects and decided to start some business that could distract me from dreams of a trip to the island, since I noticed that they took possession of me mainly when I indulged in idleness, when I had no business at all, or at least no immediate business.

For this purpose I purchased a small farm in Bedford County and decided to move there. There was a small comfortable house there, and significant improvements could be made to the farm. Such an occupation in many respects corresponded to my inclinations, moreover, this area was not adjacent to the sea, and there I could be calm that I would not have to see ships, sailors and everything that reminded me of distant lands.

I settled on my farm, moved my family there, bought plows, harrows, a cart, a wagon, horses, cows, sheep, and began to work seriously. Six months later I became a real farmer. My mind was entirely absorbed in supervising the workers, cultivating the land, building fences, planting trees, etc. And this way of life seemed to me the most pleasant of all that could be given to a person who had experienced nothing but hardships in life.

I managed my own land - I did not have to pay rent, I was not constrained by any conditions, I could build or destroy at my discretion; everything I did and undertook was for the benefit of me and my family. Having given up the idea of traveling, I did not tolerate any inconvenience in my life. Now it seemed to me that I had reached that golden mean that my father so warmly recommended to me, a blissful life similar to that which the poet describes when he sings of rural life:

Free from vices, free from worries,
Where old age knows no illness, and youth knows no temptations.

But in the midst of all this bliss, I was struck by a heavy blow, which not only irreparably shattered my life, but also revived my dreams of travel again. And these dreams took possession of me with an irresistible force, like a serious illness that suddenly returned late. And nothing could drive them away now. This blow was the death of my wife.

I am not going to write an elegy on the death of my wife, describe her virtues and flatter the weaker sex in general in a funeral speech. I will only say that she was the soul of all my affairs, the center of all my enterprises, that with her prudence she constantly distracted me from the most reckless and risky plans swarming in my head, as mentioned above, and returned me to happy moderation; she knew how to tame my restless spirit; her tears and requests influenced me more than the tears of my mother, the instructions of my father, the advice of friends and all the arguments of my own mind could influence. I felt happy to give in to her, and completely dejected and unsettled by my loss.

After her death, everything around me began to seem joyless and unsightly. I felt even more alien in my soul. Here than in the forests of Brazil when I first set foot on its shores, and as lonely as on my island, although I was surrounded by a crowd of servants. I didn't know what to do and what not to do. I saw people bustling around me; some of them worked for their daily bread, while others squandered what they had acquired in vile debauchery or vain pleasures, equally pitiful, because the goal to which they strived was constantly moving away from them. People who pursued amusements became fed up with their vice every day and accumulated material for repentance and regret, while working people wasted their strength in the daily struggle for a piece of bread. And so life passed in a constant alternation of sorrows; they lived only in order to work, and worked in order to live, as if obtaining their daily bread was the only goal of their arduous life and as if their working life had only the goal of delivering their daily bread.

I remembered then the life I had led in my kingdom, on the island, where I had to cultivate no more grain and raise no more goats than I needed, and where the money lay in chests until it rusted, as for twenty years I never even deigned to look at them.

All these observations, if I had used them as reason and religion told me, should have shown me that in order to achieve complete happiness one should not seek pleasure alone, that there is something higher that constitutes the true meaning and purpose of life, and that we can achieve possession or hope to possess this meaning even before the grave.

But my wise adviser was no longer alive, and I was like a ship without a helmsman, rushing at the will of the wind. My thoughts again turned to the same topics, and dreams of traveling to distant lands again began to spin my head. And everything that previously served as a source of innocent pleasure for me. The farm, garden, livestock, family, which previously completely owned my soul, have lost all meaning and all attractiveness for me. Now they were to me what music is to a deaf man, or food to a man who has lost taste: in short, I decided to give up farming, rent out my farm and return to London. And a few months later I did just that.

Moving to London did not improve my state of mind. I didn’t like this city, I had nothing to do there and I wandered the streets like an idle person, about whom it can be said that he is completely useless in the universe because no one cares whether he lives or dies. Such idle spending of time was extremely disgusting to me, as a person who has always led a very active life, and I often said to myself: “There is no more humiliating state in life than idleness.” And indeed, it seemed to me that I spent my time more profitably when I made one board for twenty-six days.

At the beginning of 1693, my nephew returned home from his first short trip to Bilbao, whom, as I said earlier, I made a sailor and captain of the ship. He came to me and said that merchants he knew were inviting him to go to the East Indies and China to buy goods. “If you, uncle,” he told me, “will go with me, then I can land you on your island, since we will go to Brazil.”

The most convincing proof of the existence of a future life and the invisible world is the coincidence of external reasons that prompt us to act as our thoughts inspire us, which we create in our souls completely independently and without informing anyone about them.

My nephew knew nothing about the fact that my morbid desire for wandering had awakened in me with renewed vigor, and I did not at all expect that he would come to me with such a proposal. But this very morning, after long reflection, I came to the decision to go to Lisbon and consult with my old friend the captain, and then, if he thought it feasible and reasonable, to go again to the island to see what had become of my people. I was rushing around with projects to populate the island and attract settlers from England, dreamed of taking out a patent for land and everything else I dreamed of. And just at this moment my nephew appears with an offer to take me to the island on the way to the East Indies.

Fixing my gaze on him, I asked: “What devil gave you this disastrous thought?” This at first stunned my nephew, but he soon noticed that his proposal did not cause me any particular displeasure, and took heart: “I hope it will not be disastrous,” he said, “and you will probably be pleased to see a colony that has arisen on island where you once reigned more happily than most monarchs in this world."

In a word, his project fully corresponded to my mood, that is, to the dreams that possessed me and which I have already spoken about in detail; and I answered him in a few words that if he comes to an agreement with his merchants, then I am ready to go with him, but perhaps I will not go further than my island. “Do you really want to stay there again?” he asked. “Can’t you pick me up on the way back?” He replied that the merchants would under no circumstances allow him to make such a detour with a ship loaded with goods of great value, since it would take at least a month, and maybe three or four months. “Moreover, I could be wrecked and not return at all,” he added, “then you will find yourself in the same position as you were before.”

It was very reasonable. But the two of us found a way to help the grief: we decided to take a disassembled boat with us to the ship, which, with the help of several carpenters we hired, could be assembled on the island and launched into the water in a few days.

I didn't think twice. My nephew's unexpected proposal was so consistent with my own aspirations that nothing could prevent me from accepting it. On the other hand, after the death of my wife, there was no one to care about me enough to persuade me to do one way or another, with the exception of my good friend, the captain’s widow, who seriously dissuaded me from traveling and urged me to take into account my years, material security, and the dangers of a long stay. travel undertaken unnecessarily, and especially for my small children. But all this did not have the slightest effect on me. I felt an irresistible desire to visit the island and answered my friend that my thoughts about this trip were of such an extraordinary nature that to remain at home would mean rebelling against Providence. After that, she stopped dissuading me and even began to help me herself, not only in preparations for departure, but even in the troubles of arranging my family affairs and in worries about raising my children.

To provide for them, I made a will and placed my capital in the right hands, taking all measures to ensure that my children could not be offended, no matter what fate befell me. I completely entrusted their upbringing to my widow friend, assigning her sufficient compensation for her labors. She fully deserved this, for even my mother could not have taken more care of my children and better directed their upbringing, and just as she lived to see my return, so I lived to thank her.

Early in January, 1694, my nephew was ready to sail, and I, with my Friday, reported to the ship at the Downs on the 8th of January. In addition to the aforementioned boat, I took with me a significant amount of all kinds of things necessary for my colony, in case I found it in an unsatisfactory condition, for I decided at all costs to leave it flourishing.

First of all, I took care to take with me some workmen, whom I intended to settle on the island, or at least make them work at their own expense during their stay there, and then give them the choice of either remaining on the island or returning with me. . Among them were two carpenters, a blacksmith and one clever, clever fellow, a cooper by trade, but at the same time a master of all kinds of mechanical work. He knew how to make a wheel and a hand mill, was a good turner and potter, and could make absolutely anything that could be made from clay and wood. For this we nicknamed him the “jack of all trades.”

Moreover, I took with me a tailor, who volunteered to go with my nephew to the East Indies, but then agreed to go with us to our new plantation and turned out to be a most useful man, not only in what related to his craft, but also in many other things. . For, as I already said, need teaches everything.

The cargo I took on board the ship, as far as I can remember in general - I did not keep a detailed account - consisted of a significant supply of linen and a certain amount of fine English material for the clothing of the Spaniards whom I expected to meet on the island; All of this, according to my calculations, was enough to last for seven years. More than two hundred pounds' worth of gloves, hats, boots, stockings, and everything necessary for clothing, as far as I can remember, was taken, including several beds, bedding, and household utensils, especially kitchen utensils: pots, cauldrons, pewter and copper utensils. etc. In addition, I carried with me a hundred pounds worth of iron products, nails of all kinds, tools, staples, loops, hooks and various other necessary things that just came into my head at that time.

I also took with me a hundred cheap muskets and guns, several pistols, a considerable quantity of cartridges of all calibers, three or four tons of lead and two copper cannons. And since I did not know for how long I needed to stock up and what accidents might await me, I took a hundred barrels of gunpowder, a fair amount of sabers, cutlasses and iron tips for pikes and halberds, so that, in general, we had a large supply of all sorts of goods, persuaded his nephew to take with him two more small quarter-deck guns in reserve, in addition to those required for the ship, in order to unload them on the island and then build a fort that could protect us from attacks. At first I was sincerely convinced that all this would be necessary and, perhaps, would even be insufficient to keep the island in our hands. The reader will see later how right I was.

During this journey I did not have to experience as many misfortunes and adventures as usually happened to me, and therefore I will less often have to interrupt the story and divert the attention of the reader, who may want to quickly learn about the fate of my colony. However, this voyage was not without troubles, difficulties, nasty winds and bad weather, as a result of which the journey lasted longer than I expected, and since out of all my travels I only once - namely on my first trip to Guinea - arrived safely and returned at the appointed time, then even then I began to think that I was still haunted by an evil fate and that I was so constructed that I could not wait on land and was always unlucky at sea.

Opposite winds at first drove us northward, and we were forced to call at Doves, in Ireland, where we remained, by the mercy of unfavorable winds, for twenty-two days. But here at least there was one consolation: the extreme cheapness of provisions; Moreover, here it was possible to get anything you wanted, and during the entire stay we not only did not touch the ship’s supplies, but even increased them. Here I also bought several pigs and two cows with calves, which I hoped to land on my island if the move was favorable, but they had to be disposed of differently.

We left Ireland on the 5th of February, and for several days sailed with a fair wind. Around February 20, I remember, late in the evening the captain's assistant, who was on watch, came to the cabin and reported that he had seen fire and heard a cannon shot; Before he could finish the story, the cabin boy came running with the news that the boatswain also heard the shot. We all rushed to the quarterdeck. At first we heard nothing, but after a few minutes we saw a bright light and concluded that it must be a big fire. We calculated the position of the ship and unanimously decided that in the direction where the fire appeared (west-northwest), there could not be land even at a distance of five hundred miles. It was obvious that it was a ship burning on the open sea. And since we had previously heard cannon shots, we concluded that this ship must be nearby, and headed straight in the direction where we saw the light; as we moved forward, the bright spot became larger and larger, although due to the fog we could not distinguish anything other than this spot. We sailed with a fair, although not strong, wind, and after about half an hour, when the sky cleared a little, we clearly saw that it was a large ship burning on the open sea.

I was deeply moved by this misfortune, although I did not know the victims at all. I remembered the situation in which I myself was when the Portuguese captain rescued me, and I thought that the situation of the people on this ship was even more desperate if there was no other ship nearby. I immediately ordered five cannon shots fired at short intervals to let the victims know that help was close and that they could try to escape in boats. For although we could see the flames on the ship, we could not be seen from the burning ship in the darkness of the night.

We were content to drift off while waiting for dawn, coordinating our movements with those of the burning ship. Suddenly, to our great horror - although this was to be expected - there was an explosion, and after that the ship immediately plunged into the waves. It was a terrible and amazing sight. I decided that the people on the ship either all died, or threw themselves into boats and were now rushing along the waves of the ocean. In any case, their situation was desperate. It was impossible to see anything in the darkness. But in order to, if possible, help the victims find us and let them know that a ship was nearby, I ordered lit lanterns to be hung wherever possible and cannons to be fired throughout the night.

At about eight o'clock in the morning, with the help of telescopes, we saw boats in the sea. There were two of them; both were crowded with people and sat deep in the water. We noticed that they, heading against the wind, were rowing towards our ship and were making every effort to attract our attention. We immediately raised the stern flag and began to give signals that we were inviting them to our ship, and, having increased the sails, we went to meet them. Less than half an hour had passed before we caught up with them and took them on board. There were sixty-four of them, men, women and children, for there were many passengers on the ship.

We learned that she was a French merchantman of three hundred tons, bound for France from Quebec in Canada. The captain told us in detail about the misfortunes that befell his ship. It caught fire near the steering wheel due to the negligence of the helmsman. The sailors who had come running to his call seemed to have completely extinguished the fire, but it was soon discovered that the sparks had hit such an inaccessible part of the ship that there was no way to fight the fire. Along the boards and along the lining, the flames made their way into the hold, and there no measures could stop its spread.

There was nothing left to do but lower the boats. Fortunately for those on the ship, the boats were quite spacious. They had a longboat, a large sloop and, in addition, a small skiff in which they stored supplies of fresh water and provisions. Getting into boats at such a great distance from land, they had only a faint hope of salvation; Most of all, they hoped that some ship would meet them and take them on board. They had sails, oars and a compass, and they intended to sail to Newfoundland. The wind was favorable to them. They had so much food and water that, using it in the amount necessary to maintain life, they could survive for about twelve days. And during this period, if stormy weather and nasty winds had not interfered, the captain hoped to reach the shores of Newfoundland. They also hoped that during this time they might be able to catch some fish. But at the same time they were threatened by so many unfavorable accidents, such as storms that could capsize and sink their boats, rains and colds that made their limbs go numb and numb, nasty winds that could keep them at sea for so long that they would all die from hunger that their salvation would be almost a miracle.

The captain, with tears in his eyes, told me how during their conferences, when everyone was close to despair and ready to lose all hope, they were suddenly startled by hearing a cannon shot, followed by four more. It was five cannon shots that I ordered fired when we saw the flames. These shots revived their hearts with hope and, as I expected, let them know that not far from them there was a ship coming to their aid.

Hearing the shots, they removed the masts and sails, since the sound was heard from the windward side, and decided to wait until the morning. After a while, no longer hearing any more shots, they themselves began to fire at long intervals from their muskets and fired three shots, but the wind carried the sound in the other direction, and we did not hear them.

These poor people were all the more pleasantly amazed when, after some time, they saw our lights and again heard cannon shots; as already shown, I ordered shooting throughout the night. This prompted them to take up the oars in order to quickly approach us. And finally, to their indescribable joy, they were convinced that we had noticed them.

It is impossible to describe the various movements and delights with which the rescued expressed their joy at such an unexpected deliverance from danger. It is easy to describe both grief and fear - sighs, tears, sobs and monotonous movements of the head and hands exhaust all their methods of expression; but excessive joy, delight, joyful amazement manifest themselves in a thousand ways. Some had tears in their eyes, others sobbed and moaned with such despair in their faces, as if they were experiencing the deepest sorrow. Some were violent and positively seemed crazy. Others ran around the ship, stamping their feet or cursing. Some danced, a few sang, others laughed hysterically, many remained dejectedly silent, unable to utter a single word. Some people were vomiting, several people were fainting. Few were baptized and thanked the Lord.

We must give them justice - there were many among them who later showed true gratitude, but at first the feeling of joy in them was so intense that they were not able to control it - most fell into a frenzy and some kind of madness. And only a very few remained calm and serious in their joy.

This was partly due to the fact that they belonged to the French nation, which is generally recognized to have a more changeable, passionate and lively temperament, since its vital spirits are more mobile than those of other peoples. I am not a philosopher and do not undertake to determine the cause of this phenomenon, but until then I had not seen anything like it. What came closest to these scenes was the joyful frenzy into which poor Friday, my faithful servant, fell when he found his father in the boat. They were also somewhat reminiscent of the delight of the captain and his companions, whom I rescued when the scoundrel sailors put them ashore; neither one nor the other and nothing I had seen before could be compared with what was happening now.

Daniel Defoe

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE,

forming the second and last part of his life, and a fascinating account of his travels in three parts of the world, written by himself.

Moreover, for me there was no motive that usually prompts me to go on long journeys: I had nothing to achieve wealth, there was nothing to look for. If I had gained ten thousand pounds sterling more, I would not have become richer, since I already had quite enough for myself and for those whom I needed to provide for. At the same time, my capital apparently increased, since, not having a large family, I could not even spend all my income, unless I began to spend money on the maintenance of many servants, carriages, entertainment and the like, which I do not mention. had no idea and for which I did not feel the slightest inclination. Thus, all I could do was sit quietly, use what I had acquired and observe the constant increase in my wealth.

I also thought about the new obligations I had assumed - that I had a wife and a child and that my wife was carrying another child under her heart - that I had everything that life could give me, and that I did not the need to risk oneself for money. I told myself that I was already in my declining years and it was more fitting for me to think about the fact that I would soon have to part with everything I had acquired, rather than about increasing my wealth. I thought about my wife's words that this is the will of heaven and that therefore I must to go to the island, but personally I was not at all sure about this. Therefore, after much thought, I began to struggle with my imagination and ended up reasoning with myself, as probably everyone can do in similar cases, if they only want to. In a word, I suppressed my desires; I overcame them with the help of arguments of reason, which, in my position at that time, could have been given a lot. I especially tried to direct my thoughts to other subjects and decided to start some kind of business that could distract me from dreams of a trip to the island, since I noticed that they took possession of me mainly when I indulged in idleness, when I there was no business at all, or at least no pressing business.

Books enlighten the soul, elevate and strengthen a person, awaken in him the best aspirations, sharpen his mind and soften his heart.

William Thackeray, English satirist

A book is a huge force.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Soviet revolutionary

Without books, we can now neither live, nor fight, nor suffer, nor rejoice and win, nor confidently move towards that reasonable and beautiful future in which we unshakably believe.

Many thousands of years ago, the book, in the hands of the best representatives of humanity, became one of the main weapons in their struggle for truth and justice, and it was this weapon that gave these people terrible strength.

Nikolai Rubakin, Russian bibliologist, bibliographer.

A book is a working tool. But not only. It introduces people to the lives and struggles of other people, makes it possible to understand their experiences, their thoughts, their aspirations; it makes it possible to compare, understand the environment and transform it.

Stanislav Strumilin, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences

There is no better way to refresh the mind than to read the ancient classics; As soon as you take one of them in your hands, even for half an hour, you immediately feel refreshed, lightened and cleansed, lifted and strengthened, as if you had refreshed yourself by bathing in a clean spring.

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

Anyone who was not familiar with the creations of the ancients lived without knowing beauty.

Georg Hegel, German philosopher

No failures of history and blind spaces of time are able to destroy human thought, enshrined in hundreds, thousands and millions of manuscripts and books.

Konstantin Paustovsky, Russian Soviet writer

The book is a magician. The book transformed the world. It contains the memory of the human race, it is the mouthpiece of human thought. A world without a book is a world of savages.

Nikolai Morozov, creator of modern scientific chronology

Books are a spiritual testament from one generation to another, advice from a dying old man to a young man beginning to live, an order passed on to a sentry going on vacation to a sentry taking his place.

Without books, human life is empty. The book is not only our friend, but also our constant, eternal companion.

Demyan Bedny, Russian Soviet writer, poet, publicist

A book is a powerful tool of communication, labor, and struggle. It equips a person with the experience of life and struggle of humanity, expands his horizon, gives him knowledge with the help of which he can force the forces of nature to serve him.

Nadezhda Krupskaya, Russian revolutionary, Soviet party, public and cultural figure.

Reading good books is a conversation with the best people of past times, and, moreover, such a conversation when they tell us only their best thoughts.

René Descartes, French philosopher, mathematician, physicist and physiologist

Reading is one of the sources of thinking and mental development.

Vasily Sukhomlinsky, an outstanding Soviet teacher-innovator.

Reading is for the mind what physical exercise is for the body.

Joseph Addison, English poet and satirist

A good book is like a conversation with an intelligent person. The reader receives from her knowledge and a generalization of reality, the ability to understand life.

Alexei Tolstoy, Russian Soviet writer and public figure

Do not forget that the most colossal weapon of multifaceted education is reading.

Alexander Herzen, Russian publicist, writer, philosopher

Without reading there is no real education, there is and cannot be any taste, no speech, no multifaceted breadth of understanding; Goethe and Shakespeare are equal to a whole university. By reading a person survives centuries.

Alexander Herzen, Russian publicist, writer, philosopher

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