CHAPTER 49. I BRING MY TALE TO A CLOSE

AND SO on the 19th of December, 1687, we set sail for England. I had been on the island twenty-eight years, two months, and nineteen days.

I took on board with me the money that had been by me so long and had been so useless.

I took also my big goatskin cap and my umbrella. Neither did I forget my good Poll Parrot.

As for my man Friday, nothing in the world could have parted him from me. He would have gone to the ends of the earth with me.

The voyage was a long and hard one. But on the eleventh day of June we at last reached London. Once more I was in England, the land of my birth.

I was as perfect a stranger as if I had never been there.

I went down to York. My father and mother had been dead a long time. The friends of my boyhood had forgotten me.

I was alone in the world. Where should I go and what should I do?

By chance I learned that my plantation in Brazil was doing well. The man whom I had left in charge of it had made much money from the tobacco he had raised.

He was an honest man, and when he heard that I was still alive he wrote me a long, kind letter. In this he gave me a full account of the business.

He also sent me a large amount of money, which I was very glad to get.

I was now a rich man. I might have settled down to a life of ease and idleness; but such was not my wish.

Soon I was wandering from one place to another, seeing more of the world. I had many surprising adventures, I assure you; but I need not tell you about them. You would think any account of them very dry reading compared with the story I have already related.

And so, looking back with regretful memories to the years which I spent on my dear desert island, I bid you a kind good-by.