"With one blow of his fist knocked him down." — illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891)

With one blow of his fist knocked him down. (See p. 249), signed by Wal Paget, bottom right. Paget has described the Spanish boxer as more than a match for the English bully whom he has sent sprawling (lower centre) and his two fellow-mutineers, right. One-half of page 248, vignetted: 9 cm high by 11 cm wide. Running head: "A Knock-Down Blow" (page 249).

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.]

The Passage Illustrated: The English Sailors turn on one another

The two men were at this juncture gone to find them out, and had resolved to fight them wherever they had been, though they were but two to three; so that, had they met, there certainly would have been blood shed among them, for they were all very stout, resolute fellows, to give them their due.

But Providence took more care to keep them asunder than they themselves could do to meet; for, as if they had dogged one another, when the three were gone thither, the two were here; and afterwards, when the two went back to find them, the three were come to the old habitation again: we shall see their different conduct presently. When the three came back like furious creatures, flushed with the rage which the work they had been about had put them into, they came up to the Spaniards, and told them what they had done, by way of scoff and bravado; and one of them stepping up to one of the Spaniards, as if they had been a couple of boys at play, takes hold of his hat as it was upon his head, and giving it a twirl about, fleering in his face, says to him, “And you, Seignior Jack Spaniard, shall have the same sauce if you do not mend your manners.” The Spaniard, who, though a quiet civil man, was as brave a man as could be, and withal a strong, well-made man, looked at him for a good while, and then, having no weapon in his hand, stepped gravely up to him, and, with one blow of his fist, knocked him down, as an ox is felled with a pole-axe; at which one of the rogues, as insolent as the first, fired his pistol at the Spaniard immediately; he missed his body, indeed, for the bullets went through his hair, but one of them touched the tip of his ear, and he bled pretty much. The blood made the Spaniard believe he was more hurt than he really was, and that put him into some heat, for before he acted all in a perfect calm; but now resolving to go through with his work, he stooped, and taking the fellow’s musket whom he had knocked down, was just going to shoot the man who had fired at him, when the rest of the Spaniards, being in the cave, came out, and calling to him not to shoot, they stepped in, secured the other two, and took their arms from them. [Chapter III, "Fight with the Cannibals," pp. 249-50]

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 . . . 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. 244). 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 Spanish colonists have been fairly complacent up to this point, but they decide to support the two "honest" English settlers against the former mutineers.

Related Material

Parallel Illustration by Matt Somerville Morgan (1864)

Above: Morgan's half-page woodblock engraving of two of the three mutineers' destroying the Spaniard's huts, The Pirate Firing the Hut. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Reference

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Exciting Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, as Related by Himself. With 120 original illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris,and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

Last modified 28 March 2018