"The Pirate firing the Hut" for Daniel Defoe's "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1863-64)

The Pirate firing the Hut (page 233) — the volume's sixty-first composite wood-block engraving for Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64). Part II, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Chapter III, "Fight with the Cannibals." The three marooned English mutineers are hardly pirates, but they quarrel viciously with the Spanish colonists and the two "honest Englishmen," and resort to violence, so that Matt Somerville Morgan's characterisation of the English sailors as "pirates" is not unreasonable, even if the text does not support the caption. Full-page, framed: 13 cm high x 13.4 cm wide.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated: "the three villains studied nothing by revenge"

They were going on in this little thriving position when the three unnatural rogues, their own countrymen too, in mere humour, and to insult them, came and bullied them, and told them the island was theirs: that the governor, meaning me, had given them the possession of it, and nobody else had any right to it; and that they should build no houses upon their ground unless they would pay rent for them.

The two men, thinking they were jesting at first, asked them to come in and sit down, and see what fine houses they were that they had built, and to tell them what rent they demanded; and one of them merrily said if they were the ground-landlords, he hoped if they built tenements upon their land, and made improvements, they would, according to the custom of landlords, grant a long lease: and desired they would get a scrivener to draw the writings. One of the three, cursing and raging, told them they should see they were not in jest; and going to a little place at a distance, where the honest men had made a fire to dress their victuals, he takes a firebrand, and claps it to the outside of their hut, and set it on fire: indeed, it would have been all burned down in a few minutes if one of the two had not run to the fellow, thrust him away, and trod the fire out with his feet, and that not without some difficulty too. [Chapter II, "Intervening History of the Colony," p. 231]

Commentary: An Extended Flashback

The tropical adventure of Part Two, featuring the conflict between Spanish and English colonists on Crusoe's island, continues Crusoe's conflict with the cannibals and mutineers in Part One.Here, however, Crusoe is merely re-telling a story he has pieced together from various accounts about events that transpired while he was in Europe; he plays no active role in these events, but merely comments upon the actions of the stalwart Spanish, the pair of "honest" English colonists, and the reprehensible, churlish, and racist former mutineers. And yet in this narrative Crusoe (and, by extension, Defoe) is preparing readers for the prominent role that ex-mutineer Will Atkins will shortly play.Crusoe, having brought us up to date, will continue the portion of the narrative in which he is involved in 1695, some twenty-five years before the novel's publication, so that it is very much a retrospective first-person point of view regarding events that transpire after his return to the island on the 10th of April 1695.

Crusoe has no knowledge of what has transpired originally since the Spaniard whom he had rescued from the cannibals returned with his fellow colonists after Crusoe had departed for Europe on the English ship. The Spaniard, therefore, is probably Crusoe's chief source of information about the "three barbarians" whom Crusoe had spared after the suppression of the mutiny. Crusoe then begins the flashback:

The history of their coming to, and conduct in, the island after my going away is so very remarkable, and has so many incidents which the former part of my relation will help to understand, and which will in most of the particulars, refer to the account I have already given, that I cannot but commit them, with great delight, to the reading of those that come after me. [Part Two, Chapter II, "The Intervening History of the Island," p. 242]

When the Spanish settlers returned in two large canoes, or periaguas, borrowed from the coastal aboriginals, they found the island in the possession of the mutineers. Although both nationalities at first got on amicably enough, the Englishmen were lacking in industry (according to Crusoe's interlocutor): "Englishmen, they did nothing but ramble about the island, shoot parrots, and catch tortoises; and when they came home at night, the Spaniards provided their suppers for them" (p. ). Crusoe then adds that the original three mutineers were joined by two others from the English ship who had also seemed disaffected, so that the English actually numbered five, but divided into two distinct groups living apart from one another since neither trusted the other. This is the point at which the "pirate" (that is, one of the former mutineers) set fire to the hut of the other two Englishmen. The incident establishes the ruthlessness of the mutineers' leader, Will Atkins, who becomes a significant character in the second part of the novel, for Defoe transforms him from surly lout to stalwart Christian and loyal Son of Empire.

Related Material

Parallel Illustration by Paget (1891)

Above: Wal Paget's half-page lithograph of the falling out between the three former mutineers and the two English colonists, "Bade them stand off.". [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: Wal Paget's half-page lithograph of the continuing conflict between the three former mutineers and the two English colonists, "With one blow of his fist knocked him down". [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Last modified 28 March 2018