1 They were stark naked, men, women, and children, round a fire, as I could discover by the smoke.
2 One of them spied me, and gave notice to the rest; five of them advanced toward me, leaving the women and children at the fire.
3 I found some shellfish on the shore, and ate them raw, not daring to kindle a fire, for fear of being discovered by the natives.
4 These I heated before the fire, as well as I could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the grain.
5 I ground and beat them between two stones; then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire and eat warm with milk.
6 I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish.
7 The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night, and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with poisoned arrows, to shoot you on the face and hands.
8 I delivered up both my pistols in the same manner as I had done my scimitar, and then my pouch of powder and bullets; begging him that the former might be kept from fire, for it would kindle with the smallest spark, and blow up his imperial palace into the air.
9 I was ordered to speak the few words I understood; and while they were at dinner, the master taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water, and some others, which I could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth a great facility in learning languages.
10 The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction.