TOLD TO THE CHILDREN SERIES
Edited by Louey Chisholm
ROBINSON CRUSOE
Slowly the raft drifted nearer and nearer the shore (page 15)
Daniel Defoe
ROBINSON CRUSOE
TOLD TO THE CHILDREN BY
JOHN LANG
WITH PICTURES BY
W. B. ROBINSON
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
TO
ALEC CORSE SCOTT
MY DEAR ALEC,
When Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe,nearly two hundred years ago, boys had more time on theirhands, fewer books and fewer games than they have now, andthey, as well as their fathers, read it and loved it. And whenyour father and I were boys—though that is rather less thantwo hundred years ago—we too used often to read it.
But boys nowadays do not seem to read RobinsonCrusoe as they used to do. It is too long, they think,and there is much in it that they have not time to read.That is why I have written here, in as few words aspossible, the tale of Robinson’s twenty-eight years in hisIsland, and I hope that you, and other boys, will like it.
The sea that lay round Robinson’s island is not like theone you know—the grey North Sea, stormy and cold;but it is blue like a sapphire, and where the rollers break inwhite foam on the coral reefs it seems as if it were edged withpearls. On the shores of the islands, cocoa-nut palms wavetheir feathery fronds in the breeze; butterflies of wondrouscolours hover about; and in and out amongst the thick-leavedtrees dash birds, chattering and screaming, all crimson andblue and yellow and green.
Often there are snakes too, and it was lucky that nosnakes on Robinson’s island troubled him. For on someislands that I have seen there are snakes—black and white,the most poisonous of them—that swim about in the sea andcome up on the beach, and you have to be careful that youdo not sit down on the top of one, for they are not alwaysvery quick at getting out of the way.
When you are a man, perhaps some day you will go to oneof those tropical islands. And if you take a boat and row outto the inside of the reef of coral that lies round the island, andput your face close down, and look through the quiet, crystalclear water, you will know what Fairyland beneath the seais like. You will find there gardens of a beauty never seenon land, only the branches of the trees are of coral, and in andout amongst them, instead of bright-coloured birds, you willsee fishes swimming, some of a vivid