The Hammock.--Poison.--Success.--A Calm under the Tropics.--Invasion
of the Island.--War and Plunder.--The Oasis.--The Spy-Glass.
--Reconciliation.
Do you see, upon a carpet of fresh verdure, the sandy margin of which
is bathed by a caressing wave, that hammock suspended to the branches
of those fine trees? What happy mortal, during the heat of the day, is
there gently rocked, gently refreshed, by a light sea breeze? It is
Selkirk; and this hammock is his sail, attached to his tall myrtles by
strips of goat-skin. Perhaps he is resting after the fatigues of the
day? No, it is the day of the Lord, and Selkirk now can consecrate the
Sabbath to repose. With his eyes half closed, he is inhaling,
undoubtedly, the perfume of his myrtles, the soft fragrance of his
heliotropes? No, something sweeter still pre-occupies him. Is he
dreaming of his friends in Scotland, of his first love? He has never
known friendship, and the beautiful Catherine is far from his memory.
What is he then doing in his hammock? He is smoking his pipe.
His pipe! Has he a pipe? He has them of all forms, all sizes--made of
spiral shells of various kinds, of maripa-nuts, of large reeds; all
set in handles of myrtle, stalks of coarse grain, or the hollow bones
of birds. In these he is luxurious; he has become a connoisseur; but
this has not been the difficulty. Before every thing else, tobacco was
wanting.
In consequence of his encounter with Marimonda, he ransacked the woods
and meadows, seeking among all plants those which approximated nearest
to the nature of the nicotiana. As it was necessary to judge by their
taste, he bit their leaves--chewed them, still in imitation of the
monkey: but, to his new and profound humiliation, less skilful or less
fortunate than the latter, he obtained at first no other result than a
sort of poisoning: one of these plants being poisonous.
For several days he saw himself condemned to absolute repose and a
spare diet. His mouth, swollen, excoriated, refused all nourishment;
his throat was burning; his body was covered with an eruption, and his
languid and trembling limbs scarcely permitted him to drag himself to
the stream to quench there the thirst by which he was devoured.
He believed himself about to die; and grief then imposing silence on
pride, with his eyes turned towards the sea, he allowed a
long-repressed sigh to escape his heart. It was a regret for his
absent country.
Very soon these alarming symptoms disappeared; his strength returned;
his water-cresses and wild sorrel completed the cure. Would he have
dared to ask it of the other productions of his island? He had become
suspicious of nature; these, at least, he had long known.
Scarcely had he recovered, when the want of tobacco made itself felt
anew with more force than ever. What to him imports experiment, what
imports danger? Is it not to procure this precious, indispensable
herb,--which the world had easily done without for thousands of years?
This time, nevertheless, become more prudent, he no longer addresses
himself to the sense of taste; but to odor, to that of smell. He has
resolved to dry the different plants which appear to him most proper
for the use to which he destines them, and to submit them afterwards
to a trial by fire. Will not the smoke which escapes from them easily
enable him to discover the qualities which he requires, since it is in
smoke that they are to evaporate, if he succeeds in his researches?
Of this grand collection of aromatics, two plants, at last, come off
victorious. One is the petunia, that charming flower which at present
decorates all our gardens, whence the enemies of tobacco may one day
banish it; so it is only with trembling that I here announce its
relationship to the nicotiana; the other, which, like the petunia,
grows in profusion in the islands as well as on the continent of
Southern America, is the herb _coca_, improperly so called, for its
precious leaves, which are to the natives of Peru and Chili, what the
_betel_ is for the Indians of Malabar, grow on an elegant shrub.[1]
[Footnote 1: The _erythroxylum coca_.]
These two plants, separately or together, composed, thanks to a slight
amalgam of chalk, sea-water, and bruised pepper-corns, the most
delicious tobacco.
Now, half awake, Selkirk smokes, as he busies himself with
constructing some necessary article, such as a ladder, a stool, a
basket of rushes, with which he is completing the furniture of his
house; he smokes while fishing, and while hunting; on his return to
his dwelling, he lies down at the entrance of his grotto, on his bank
of turf, re-lights his pipe at his fire, and smokes; at the hour of
breakfast or of dinner, seated beneath the shade of his mimosa, his
elbow on the table, his Bible open before him, he smokes still.
Well! notwithstanding these pleasures so long desired, notwithstanding
this addition to his comfort, notwithstanding his pipe, this vague
uneasiness sometimes assails him anew.
He ascribes it to enfeebled health; and yet he remains active and
vigorous; he ascribes it to the powerful odors of certain trees which
affect his brain. These trees he destroys around him, but his
uneasiness continues; he ascribes it to his food, the insipidity of
the fish which he has eaten without salt, since his quarter of pork is
consumed, and his stores of pickled fish exhausted. In fact, the flesh
of fish has for some time given him a nausea, occasioned frequent
indigestions; he renounces it; his stomach recovers its tone; but his
fits of torpor and melancholy continue.
This state of suffering is most painful at those moments of profound
calm, common between the tropics, when the birds are silent, when from
the thickets and burrows issue no murmurs, when the insect seems to
sleep within the closed corollas of the flowers; when the leaves of
the mimosa fold themselves; when the tree-tops are not swayed by the
slightest breath of air, and the sea, motionless, ceases to dash
against the shore. What an inexpressible weight such a silence adds to
isolation! And yet it is not an unbroken silence, for then a shrill
and harsh sound seems to grate upon the ear. It is as if in this
muteness of nature, one could hear the motion of the earth on its
axis; then, above his head, in the depths of immensity, the whirling
of the celestial spheres and myriads of worlds which gravitate in
space. Thought becomes troubled and exhausted before this overwhelming
and terrible immobility, and the man who, at such a moment, cannot
have recourse to his kind, to distract or re-assure him, is
overpowered with his own insignificance.
Sometimes the solitary calls on himself to break this oppressive and
painful silence; he articulates a few words aloud, and his voice
inspires him with fear; it seems formidable and unnatural.
During one of these sinister calms, in which every thing in creation
seemed to pause, even the heart of man, seated on the shore, not
having even strength to smoke, Selkirk was vainly awaiting the evening
breeze; nothing came, but the obscurity of night. The moon, delaying
her appearance, submitting in her turn to the sluggishness of all
things, seemed detained below the circle of the horizon by some fatal
power; the sea was dull, gloomy, and as it were congealed.
Suddenly, though there was not a breath of air, Selkirk saw at his
right, on a vast but limited tract of ocean, the waves violently
agitated and foaming. He thought he distinguished a multitude of
barques and canoes furrowing the surface of the waters; not far from
Swordfish Beach, the flotilla enters a little cove running up into the
mountains.
He no longer sees any thing; but he hears a frightful tumult of
discordant cries.
There is no room for doubt! some Indian tribes, pursued perhaps by new
conquerors from Europe, have just disembarked on the shore. Wo to him!
he can hope from them neither pity nor mercy. A cold sweat bathes his
forehead; he runs to his grotto, takes his gun, puts in his goatskin
pouch some horns of powder and shot, a piece of smoked meat, not
forgetting his Bible! and passes the night wandering in the woods, in
the mountains, a prey to a thousand terrors; hearing without cessation
the steps of pursuers behind him, and seeing fiery eyes glaring at him
through the thickets.
At day-break, with a thousand precautions, he returns to his grotto.
He finds the beach covered with seals.
These were the enemies whose invasion had so alarmed him.
It is now the middle of the month of February, the period of the
greatest tropical heats, and these amphibia, having left the shores of
Chili or Peru, are accomplishing one of their periodical migrations.
They have just taken possession of the island, one of their accustomed
stations. But the island has now a master.
Where he expected to encounter a peril, Selkirk finds amusement, a
subject of study, perhaps a resource.
A long time ago he has read, in the narratives of voyagers, singular
stories concerning these marine animals, these _lions_, these
_sea-elephants_, flocks of old Neptune, who have their chiefs, their
pacha; who are acquainted with and practise the discipline of war;
stationing vigilant sentinels in the spots they occupy, communicating
to each other a pass-word, and attentive to the _Qui vive_?
He spies them, he watches them, he takes pleasure in examining their
grotesque forms,--half quadruped, half fish; their feet encased in a
sort of web, and terminated by crooked claws, with which they creep on
the earth; their skins, covered with short and glossy hair; their
round heads and eyes.
He is a witness of their sports, their combats; but very soon their
frightful roaring and bellowing annoys him, and makes him regret the
silence of his solitude. Another cause of complaint against them soon
arises.
One morning, Selkirk finds his fish-pond and bed of water-cresses
devastated.
Exasperated, he declares war against the invaders: during three days
he tracks them, pursues them; ten of them fall beneath his balls,
leaving the shore bathed in their blood. The rest at last take flight,
and the army of seals, regaining the sea with despairing cries, goes
to establish itself at the other extremity of the island.
This war has been profitable to the conqueror. With the skin of the
vanquished he makes himself a new hammock, which permits him to employ
his sail for other uses; he also makes leather bottles, in which he
preserves the oil which he extracts in abundance from their fat. Now
he can have a lamp constantly burning, even by night. He has all the
comforts of life. Of the hairy skin of the seals, he manufactures a
broad-brimmed hat, which shields him from the burning rays of the sun.
He tastes their flesh; it appears to him insipid and nauseous, like
that of the fish; but the tongue, the heart, seasoned with pepper, are
for him quite a luxury.
Days, weeks, months roll away in the same toils, the same recreations.
Whatever he may do to drive it away, this apathetic sadness, this
sinking of soul, which has already tormented him at different periods,
becomes with Selkirk more and more frequent; he cannot conquer it as
he did the seals. His seals, he now regrets. When they were encamped
on the shore, they at least gave him something to look at, an
amusement; something lived, moved, near him.
When he finds himself a prey to these fits, which, in his pride, he
persists in attributing to transient indisposition, he goes to walk in
the mountains, taking with him only his pipe, his Bible, and his
spy-glass.
He often pursues his journey as far as the oasis; there, he seats
himself at the extremity of the little valley, opposite the sea, from
which his eye can traverse its immense extent. He opens the holy book,
and closes it immediately; then, his brow reddening, he seizes his
spy-glass, levels it, and remains entire hours measuring the ocean,
wave by wave.
What is he looking for there? He seeks a sail, a sail which shall come
to his island and bear him from his desert, from his _ennui_. His
_ennui_ he can no longer dissimulate; this is the evil of his
solitude.
One day, while he was at this spot, the setting sun suddenly
illuminated a black point, against which the waves seemed to break in
foam, as against the prow of a ship; his eyes become dim, a tremor
seizes him. He looks again--keeps his glass for a long time fixed on
the same object, but the black point does not stir.
'Another illusion!' said he to himself; 'it is a reef, a rock which
the tide has left bare.'
He wipes the glasses of his spy-glass, he examines again; he seems to
see the waves whiten and whirl for a large space around this rock.
'Can it be an island? If an island, is it inhabited? I will construct
a barque, and if God has pity on me I will reach it.'
At this moment he hears footsteps resound on the dry leaves which the
wind has swept into the little valley. He turns hastily.
It is Marimonda.
Marimonda has no longer her lively and dancing motions; she also seems
languid, sad. At sight of Selkirk, she makes a movement as if to flee;
but almost immediately advances a little, and, sorrowful, with bent
brow, sits down on a bank not far from him.
Has she then remarked that he is without arms?
On his side, Selkirk who had not met her for a long time, seemed to
have forgotten his former aversion.
At all events, is she not the most intelligent being chance has placed
near him? He remembers that, in the ship, she obeyed the voice, the
gesture of the captain, and that her tricks amused the whole crew.
This resemblance to the human form, which he at first disliked, now
awakens in him ideas of indulgence and peace. He reproaches himself
with having treated her so brutally, when the poor animal, who alone
had accompanied him into exile, at first accosted him with a caress.
And now she returns, laying aside all ill-will, forgetting even the
wound which she received from him in an impulse of irritation and
hatred, of which she was not the object, for which she ought not to be
responsible.
He therefore makes to her a little sign with the head.
Marimonda replies by winks of the eye and motions of the shoulders,
which Selkirk thinks not wholly destitute of grace.
He rises and approaches her, saluting her with an amicable gesture.
She awaits him, chattering with her teeth and lips with an expression
of joy.
Selkirk gently passes his hand over her forehead and neck, calling her
by name; then he starts for his habitation, and Marimonda follows him.
The man and the monkey have just been reconciled. Both were tired of
their isolation.