When they hear my voice, they can’t believe that somebody speaks English to them from the dark forest.
“What is that?” asks one of the men.
“I hear something. I hear a tree speak,” answers the other. “But it’s impossible. A tree can’t speak English.”
“Yes, you hear something but it’s not a tree,” I say quietly. “My name is Robinson Crusoe. I’m an Englishman. I live on this island. I can help you if you tel me who you are.”
After the first shocking moment, one man answers my question. He is the captain of the ship.
But after a rebellion on the ship, the captain, his assistant and a passenger are prisoners. The other sailors want to leave them on the island.
The captain says, “The truth is that there are only two dangerous sailors who control the others in the group. Eighty percent of them are still loyal to me. If the leaders are caught, the rest can return under my control.”
CHAPTER 28 – CONTROL
I say, “I can help you but I have one condition. I want full control over the ship if we manage to get the ship back.”
The captain and the other two prisoners agree. They give me full control over the ship and over their lives.
We free the prisoners. Then we go back to the forest. I give them guns and we start to plan the attack.
In the middle of our conversation, we see that the sailors who stand guard wake up. They stand up. They shout to three other men who are near to them. At that moment, we shoot the guards.
Then the captain speaks to the three other men. He doesn’t want to shoot them but they must be loyal to him and help him get the ship back. They agree. We tie them and leave them on the beach.
The other three men who hear the shots come back. They see that the situation is changed. We are five. We have a lot of guns. The situation is bad for them.
They also say that they want to be loyal to the captain. We tie these men too.
We hide our six prisoners in the forest. Then I and the captain have finally time to talk to each other. I tell him my story and he is shocked. He also thanks me a lot for my help.
He and his two friends are hungry, so we go to my house. I show them the results of my work during all the years on the island. They are surprised when they see what I have.
But we don’t have much time to explore my home. We have to plan how to get the ship back.
There are sixteen men on board and we are only five.
First, we decide to take everything out of the boat. We thinks that the sailors can send another boat to the island if the men from the first boat don’t come back with the next high tide.
In the morning, we hear a gun. It’s a signal from the ship. After some time, we hear the gun again and again. There is no answer. Then we see that the sailors take another boat and go to the beach.
We see eight men. They all have guns. The captain tells me that six men are still loyal to him.
But there is also the man who is the leader of the rebellion.
The captain thinks that it’s difficult to beat them. But I tell him that we have a good chance to win. But we have to do something quickly.
The captain trusts two of our prisoners. They promise to fight on our side. We give them weapons. We are seven men ready to fight. We wait for the arrival of the boat.
When the boat reaches the beach, the men jump out of the boat. They pull the boat on the beach.
Then, they run to the other boat. They are surprised when they see the boat empty. They call their friends. They shout.
Then, they shoot in the air but it’s al useless. Nobody shouts back. The sailors are confused.
They don’t understand the situation. They start to put the boat in the water again.
It looks like they want to go back to the ship to tell the others that there is a problem.
When the captain sees this, he is afraid that they can go back to the ship and leave the island forever.
But 10 seconds later, the sailors change their plan. Now, they leave three men in the boat. The other five men go to the forest to look for their friends.
CHAPTER 29 – PLAN
We continue to watch all the actions of both groups. The five men in the forest sit down under a tree. They discuss what to do. They argue a little.
After a long conversation under the tree, they get up. Then they walk to the beach. Maybe they don’t want to look for friends.
We have to do something quickly. We can’t let them go back to the boat.
I have a plan. I tell the assistant to go more to the centre of the island. Friday goes with him.
Then, they shout at the sailors. When the sailors hear this, they shout back. Then they go in the direction of the voice.
Friday and the assistant continue to shout back. They take the sailors to the opposite side of the island. This strategy works very well. The five men are soon very far from the beach.
This is very good for us. We go to the three men in the boat. We explain the situation to them.
They decide not to fight us. They become our prisoners too.
After some time, Friday and the assistant return. The sailors are very far from the beach. The sailors can’t return soon. We hide and we wait for them.
When the sailors return, they are very tired. First, they go to the boat. They are surprised when they don’t find the three men.
They call their friends. But nobody answers. The leader and two other men walk to the forest where we are hiding.
The captain and Friday attack them when they are close to us. The leader is killed immediately.
The second man is injured. The third man runs back to the boat.
Then we all go out of the forest. We run to the boat. The captain speaks to sailors. He tells them to give up. When the sailors understand the situation, they drop their weapons quickly.
