The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or the Real Robinson Crusoe Part 13

'None,' said Selkirk; 'the last lines were effaced;' and he trembled at the idea of all the dangers he had run in pursuit of this friend, who no longer existed, and of a land which he had never inhabited.

After having satisfied a duty of humanity, that which he had regarded as a debt contracted towards a friend, Selkirk, among other inquiries, let fall the name of Stradling. This time, it was hatred which asked information.

His hatred was destined to be gratified.

In pursuing his voyage, after having coasted along the sh.o.r.es of the Straits of Magellan, Stradling, surprised by a frightful hurricane, had seen his vessel entirely disabled. Repulsed at five different times, now by the tempest, now by the Spaniards, from the ports where he attempted to take refuge, he was thrown, near La Plata, on an inhospitable sh.o.r.e. Attacked, pillaged by the natives, half of his crew having perished, with the remains of his ship he constructed another, to which he gave the name of the Cinque Ports, instead of that of the Swordfish, which it was no longer worthy to bear. This was a large pinnace, on which he had secretly returned to England. For several years past, Dampier had not heard of him.

Selkirk thought himself sufficiently avenged; his present happiness silenced his past ill-will. He even became reconciled to his island.

Each day he traversed its divers parts, with emotions various as the remembrances it awakened. But he was now no longer alone! Arm and arm with Dampier, he revisited these places where he had suffered so much, and which often resumed for him their enchanting aspects.

His companion was soon informed of his history. When he had related what we already know, from his landing to the construction of his raft, and to his frightful shipwreck, he at last commenced, not without some mortification, the recital of his final miseries, which alone could explain the deplorable state in which the English sailors had found him.

By the loss of his hatchets, his ladder, his other instruments of labor, condemned to inaction, to powerlessness, he had nothing to occupy himself with but to provide sustenance. But the sea had taken his snares along with the rest. He at first subsisted on herbs, fruits and roots; afterwards his stomach rejected these crudities, as it had repulsed the fish. Armed with a stick, he had chased the agoutis; for want of agoutis, he had eaten rats.

By night, he silently climbed the trees to surprise the female of the toucan or blackbird, which he pitilessly stifled over their young brood. Meanwhile, at the noise he made among the branches, this winged prey almost always escaped him.

He tried to construct a ladder; by the aid of his knife alone, he attempted to cut down two tall trees. During this operation his knife broke--only a fragment remained. This was for him a great trial.

He thought of making, with reeds and the fibres of the aloe, a net to catch birds; but all patient occupation, all continuous labor, had become insupportable to him.

That he might escape the gloomy ideas which a.s.sailed him more and more, it became necessary to avoid repose, to court bodily fatigue.

By continual exercise, his powers of locomotion had developed in incredible proportions. His feet had become so hardened that he no longer felt the briers or sharp stones. When he grew weary, he slept, in whatever place he found himself, and these were his only quiet hours.

To chase the agoutis had ceased to be an object worthy of his efforts; the kids took their turn, afterwards the goats. He had acquired such dexterity of movement, and such strength of muscle, such certainty of eye, that to leap from one projection of rock to another, to spring at one bound over ravines and deep cavities, was to him but a childish sport. In these feats he took pleasure and pride.

Sometimes, in the midst of his flights through s.p.a.ce, he would seize a bird on the wing.

The goats themselves soon lost their power to struggle against such a combatant. Notwithstanding their number, had Selkirk wished it, he might have depopulated the island. He was careful not to do this.

If he wished to procure a supply of provisions, he directed his steps towards the most elevated peaks of the mountain, marked his game, pursued it, caught it by the horns, or felled it by a blow from his stick; after which his knife-blade did its office. The goat killed, he threw it on his shoulders, and, almost as swiftly as before, regained the cavernous grotto or leafy tree, in the shelter of which he could this day eat and sleep. He had for a long time forsaken his cabin, which was too far distant from his hunting-grounds.

If he had a stock of provision on hand, he still pursued the goats as usual, but only for his personal gratification. If he caught one, he contented himself with slitting its ear; this was his seal, the mark by which he recognized his free flock. During the last years of his abode in the island, he had killed or marked thus nearly five hundred.[1]

[Footnote 1: Long after his departure from Juan Fernandez, the ship's crews, who came there for supplies, or the pirates who took refuge there, found goats whose ears had been slit by Selkirk's knife.]

In the natural course of things, as his physical powers increased, his intelligence became enfeebled.

Necessity had at first aroused his industry, for all industry awakes at the voice of want; but his own had been due rather to his recollections than to his ingenuity. He thought himself a creator, he was only an imitator.

Whatever may have been said by those who, in the pride of a deceitful philosophy, have wished to glorify the power of the solitary man--if the latter, supported by certain fortunate circ.u.mstances, can remain some time in a state hardly endurable, it is not by his own strength, but by means which society itself has furnished. This is the incontestable truth, from which, in his pride, Selkirk had turned away.

Deprived of exercise and of aliment, his thoughts, no longer sustained by reading the Holy Book, were day by day lost in a chaos of dreams and reveries.

A prey to terrors which he could not explain, he feared darkness, he trembled at the slightest sound of the wind among the branches; if it blew violently, he thought the trees would be uprooted and crush him; if the sea roared, he trembled at the idea of the submersion of his entire island.

When he traversed the woods, especially if the heat was great, he often heard, distinctly, voices which called him or replied. He caught entire phrases; others remained unfinished. These phrases, connected neither with his thoughts nor his situation, were strange to him.

Sometimes he even recognized the voice.

Now it was that of Catherine, scolding her servants; now that of Stradling, of Dampier, or one of his college tutors. Once he heard thus the voice of one of his cla.s.smates whom he least remembered; at another time it was that of his old admiral, Rourke, uttering the words of command.

If he attempted to raise his own to impose silence on these choruses of demons who tormented him, it was only with painful efforts that he could succeed in articulating some confused syllables.

He no longer talked, but he still sang; he sang the monotonous and mournful airs of his psalms, the words of which he had totally forgotten. His memory by degrees became extinct. Sometimes even, he lost the sentiment of his ident.i.ty; then, at least, his state of isolation, and the memory of his misfortunes ceased to weigh upon him.

He nevertheless remembered, that about this time, having approached Swordfish Beach, attracted by an unusual noise there, he had seen it covered with soldiers and sailors, doubtless Spaniards. The idea of finding himself among men, had suddenly made his heart beat; but when he descended the declivity of the hills in order to join them, several shots were fired; the b.a.l.l.s whistled about his ears, and, filled with terror, he had fled.

Once more he had found himself there, but without intending it, for then he could no longer find his way, by the points of the compa.s.s, through the woods and valleys leading to the sh.o.r.e. Ah! how had his ancient abode changed its aspect! How many years had rolled away since he lived there! The little gravelled paths, which conducted to the grotto and the mimosa, were effaced; the mimosa, its princ.i.p.al branches broken, seemed buried beneath its own ruins; of his fish-pond, his bed of water-cresses, not a vestige remained; his grotto, veiled, hid beneath the thick curtains of vines and heliotropes, was no longer visible; his cabin had ceased to exist,--overthrown, swept away doubtless, by a hurricane, as his inclosure had been. He could discover the spot only by the five myrtles, which, disembarra.s.sed of their roof of reeds and their plaster walls, had resumed their natural decorations, green and glossy, as if the hatchet had never touched them. At their feet tufts of briers and other underbrush had grown up, as formerly. The two streams, the _Linnet_ and the _Stammerer_, alone had suffered no change. The one with its gentle murmur, the other with its silvery cascades, after having embraced the lawn, still continued to flow towards the sea, where they seemed to have buried, with their waves, the memory of all that had pa.s.sed on their borders.

At sight of his sh.o.r.e, which seemed to have retained no vestige of himself, Selkirk remained a few moments, mournful and lost in his incoherent thoughts, in the midst of which this was most prominent:--Yet alive, already forgotten by the world, I have seen my traces disappear, even from this island which I have so long inhabited!

A rustling was heard in the foliage; he raised his eyes, expecting to see Marimonda swinging on the branch of a tree. Perceiving nothing, he remembered that Marimonda reposed at the Oasis; he took the road from the mountain which led thither, but when he arrived there, when he was before her tomb, covered with tall gra.s.s, he had forgotten why he came.

One of those unaccountable fits of terror, which were now more frequent than formerly, seized him, and he precipitately descended the mountain, springing from peak to peak along the rocks.

The religious sentiment, which formerly sustained Selkirk in his trials, was not entirely extinct; but it was obscured beneath his darkened reason. His religion was only that of fear. When the sea was violently agitated, when the storm howled, he prostrated himself with clasped hands; but it was no longer G.o.d whom he implored; it was the angry ocean, the thunder. He sought to disarm the genius of evil. The lightning having one day struck, not far from him, a date-palm, he worshipped the tree. His perverted faith had at last terminated in idolatry.

This was, in substance, what Alexander Selkirk related to William Dampier; what solitude had done for this man, still so young, and formerly so intelligent; this was what had become of the despiser of men, when left to his own reason.

Dampier listened with the most profound attention, interrupting him in his narrative only by exclamations of interest or of pity. When he ceased to speak, holding out his hand to him, he said:

'My boy, the lesson is a rude one, but let it be profitable to you; let it teach you that _ennui_ on board a vessel, even with a Stradling, is better than _ennui_ in a desert. Undoubtedly there are among us troublesome, wicked people, but fewer wicked than crack-brained. Believe, then, in friendship, especially in mine; from this day it is yours, on the faith of William Dampier.'

And he opened his arms to the young man, who threw himself into them.

On their return to the vessel, Dampier presented to Selkirk his own Bible. The latter seized it with avidity, and, after having turned over its leaves as if to find a text which presented itself to his mind, read aloud the following pa.s.sage:

'He was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild a.s.ses; they fed him with gra.s.s like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven.'--DANIEL v. 21.

CONCLUSION.

Capt. Rogers, in his turn, learned the misfortunes of Selkirk and became attached to him; from this moment, the sailors themselves showed him great deference; he was known among them by the name of _the governor_, and this t.i.tle clung to him.

To do the honors of his island, the governor one day gave to the crews of the two vessels, the spectacle of one of his former hunts. Resuming his ancient costume, he returned to the high mountains, where, before their eyes, he started a goat, and darting in pursuit of it, over a thousand cliffs, sometimes clearing frightful abysses, by means of a vine which he seized on his pa.s.sage,--this method he owed to Marimonda,--he succeeded in forcing his game to the hills of the sh.o.r.e. Arrived there, exhausted, panting, drawing itself up like a stag at bay, the goat stopped short. Selkirk took it living on his shoulders, and presented it to Capt. Rogers. Its ear was already slit.

By way of thanks, the captain announced that he might henceforth be connected with the expedition, with his old rank of mate, which was restored to him. For this favor Selkirk was indebted to the solicitations of Dampier.

In the same vessel with Dampier, he made another three years' voyage, visited Mexico, California, and the greater part of North America; after which, still in company with Dampier, and possessor of a pretty fortune, he returned to England, where the recital of his adventures, already made public, secured him the most honorable patronage and friendship. Among his friends, may be reckoned Steele, the co-laborer, the rival of Addison, who consecrated a long chapter to him in his publication of the Tatler.

Selkirk did not fail to visit Scotland. Pa.s.sing through St. Andrew, could he help experiencing anew the desire to see his old friend pretty Kitty? Once more he appeared before the bar of the Royal Salmon. This time, on meeting, Selkirk and Catherine both experienced a sentiment of painful surprise. The latter, stouter and fuller than ever, fat and red-faced, touched the extreme limit of her fourth and last youth; the solitary of Juan Fernandez, with his gray hair, his copper complexion, could scarcely recall to the respectable hostess of the tavern the elegant pilot of the royal navy, still less the pale and blond student, of whom she had been, eighteen years before, the first and only love.

'Is it indeed you, my poor Sandy,' said she, with an accent of pity; 'I thought you were dead.'

'I have been nearly so, indeed, and a long time ago, Kitty. But who has told you of me?'