Discouragement.--A Discovery.--A Retrospective Glance.--Project of
Suicide.--The Last Shot.--The Sea Serpent.--The _Porro_.--A Message.
--Another Solitary.
His provisions are exhausted, and Selkirk thinks not of renewing them;
his settlement on the shore is destroyed, and he thinks not of
rebuilding it; the fish-pond, the bed of water-cresses are encroached
upon by sand and weeds, and he thinks not of repairing them. His mind,
completely discouraged, recoils before such labors; he has scarcely
troubled himself to replace the roof of his cabin.
In the midst of his dreams, Selkirk had not counted enough on two
terrific guests, which must sooner or later come: despair and _ennui_.
Nevertheless, he had read in his Bible this passage: 'As the worm
gnaweth the garment and rottenness the wood, so doth the weariness of
solitude gnaw the heart of man.'
One day, as he was descending from the Oasis, where he had dug a tomb
for Marimonda, he bethought himself of visiting the site of his
burning wood.
Around him, the earth, blackened by the ravages of the fire, presented
only a naked, gloomy and desolate picture. To his great surprise,
beneath the ruins, under coal dust and half-calcined trunks of trees,
he discovered, elevated several feet above the soil, the partition of
a wall, some stones quarried out and placed one upon another; in fine,
the remains of a building, evidently constructed by the hand of man.
Men had then inhabited this island before him! What had become of
them? This wood, impenetrably choked, stifled with thorny bushes,
briars and vines, and which he had delivered over to the flames, was
undoubtedly a garden planted by them, on a sheltered declivity of the
mountain; the garden which surrounded their habitation, as he had
himself designed his own to do.
Ah! if he could have but found them in the island, how different would
have been his fate! But to live alone! to have no companions but his
own thoughts! amid the dash of waves, the cry of birds, the bleating
of goats, incessantly to imagine the sound of a human voice, and
incessantly to experience the torture of being undeceived! What
elements of happiness has he ever met in this miserable island? When
he dreamed of creating resources for a long and peaceful future, he
lied to himself. A life favored by leisure would but crush him the
oftener beneath the weight of thought, and it is thought which is
killing him, the thought of isolation!
What import to him the beautiful sights spread out before his eyes?
The vast extent of sky and earth has repeated to him each day that he
is lost, forgotten on an obscure point of the globe. The sunrises and
sunsets, with their magic aspects, this luxuriant tropical vegetation,
the magnificent and picturesque scenery of his island, awaken in him
only a feeling of restraint, an uneasiness which he cannot define.
Perhaps the emotions, so sweet to all, are painful to him only because
he cannot communicate them, share them with another. It is not the
noisy life of cities which he asks, not even that of the shore. But,
at least, a companion, a being to reply to his voice, to be associated
with his joys, his sorrows. Marimonda! No, he recognizes it now!
Marimonda could amuse him, but was not sufficient; she inhabited with
him only the exterior world, she communicated with him only by things
visible and palpable; her affection for her master, her gentleness,
her admirable instinct, sometimes succeeded in lessening the distance
which separated their two natures, but did not wholly fill up the
interval.
He had exaggerated the intelligence which, besides, increased at the
expense of her strength, as with all monkeys; for God has not willed
that an animal should approximate too closely to man; he had overrated
the sense of her acts, because he needed near him a thinking and
acting being; but with her, confidences, plans, hopes, communication,
the exchange of all those intimate and mysterious thoughts which are
the life of the soul, were they possible? Even her eyes did not see
like his own; admiration was forbidden to her; admiration, that
precious faculty, which exists only for man,--and which becomes
extinct by isolation.
How many others become extinct also!
Self-love, a just self-esteem, that powerful lever which sustains us,
which elevates us, which compels us to respect in ourselves that
nobility of race which we derive from God, what becomes of it in
solitude? For Selkirk, vanity itself has lost its power to stimulate.
Formerly, when in the presence of his comrades at St. Andrew or of the
royal fleet, he had signalized himself by feats of address or courage,
a sentiment of pride or triumph had inspired him. Since his arrival in
the island, his courage and address have had but too frequent
opportunities of exercising themselves, but he has been excited only
by want, by necessity, by a purely personal interest. Besides, can one
utter an exclamation of triumph, where there is not even an echo to
repeat it?
After having thus painfully passed in review all of which his exile
from the world had deprived him, he exclaimed:
'To live alone, what a martyrdom! to live useless to all, what a
disgrace! What! does no one need me? What! are generosity, devotion,
even pity, all those noble instincts by which the soul reveals itself,
for ever interdicted to me? This is death, death premature and
shameful! Ah! why did I not remain at the foot of that precipice?'
With downcast head, he remained some time overwhelmed with the weight
of his discouragement; then, suddenly, his brow cleared up, a sinister
thought crossed his mind; he ran to his cabin, seized his gun. This
last shot, this last charge of powder and lead, which he has preserved
so preciously as a final resource, it will serve to put an end to his
days! Well, is not this the most valuable service he can expect from
it? He examines the gun; the priming is yet undisturbed; he passes his
nail over the flint, leans the butt against the ground, takes off the
thick leather which covers his foot, that he may be able to fire with
more certainty. But during all these preparations his resolution grows
weaker; he trembles as he rests the gun against his temples; that
sentiment of self-preservation, so profoundly implanted in the heart
of man, re-awakens in him. He hesitates--thrice returning to his first
resolution, he brings the gun to his forehead; thrice he removes it.
At last, to drive away this demon of suicide, he fires it in the air.
Scarcely has he thus uselessly thrown away this precious shot before
he repents. He approaches the shore; it is at the moment when the tide
is at its lowest ebb; the sun touches the horizon. Selkirk lies down
on the damp beach:--'When the wave returns,' said he, 'if it be God's
will, let it take me!'
Slumber comes first. Exhausted with emotion, yielding to the lassitude
of his mind, he falls asleep. In the middle of the night, suddenly
awakened by the sound of the advancing wave, he again flees before the
threat of death; he no longer wishes to die. Once in safety, he turns
to contemplate that immense sea which, for an instant, he had wished
might be his tomb.
By the moonlight, he perceives as it were a long and slender chain,
which, gliding upon the crest of the waves, directs itself towards the
shore. By its form, by its copper color, by the multiplicity of its
rings, unfolding in the distance, Selkirk recognizes the sea-serpent,
that terror of navigators, as he has often heard it described.
The mind of the solitary is a perpetual mirage.
Filled with terror, he flies again; he conceals himself, trembling, in
the caverns of his mountains; he has become a coward; why should he
affect a courage he does not feel? No one is looking at him!
The next day, instead of the sea-serpent, he finds on the beach an
immense cryptogamia, a gigantic alga, of a single piece, divided into
a thousand cylindrical branches, and much superior to all those he has
observed in the Straits of Sunda. The rising tide had thrown it on the
shore.
While he examines it, he sees with surprise all sorts of birds come to
peck at it; coatis, agoutis, and even rats, come out of their holes,
boldly carrying away before his eyes fragments, whence issues a thick
and brown sap. Emboldened by their example, and especially by the
balsamic odor of the plant, he tastes it. It is sweet and succulent.
This plant is no other than that providential vegetable called by the
Spaniards _porro_, and which forms so large a part of the nourishment
of the poor inhabitants of Chili.[1]
[Footnote 1: It is the _Durvilloea utilis_, dedicated to Dumont
d'Urville, by Bory de St. Vincent, and classed by him in the
laminariées, an important and valuable family of marine cryptogamia.]
The sea, which had already sent Selkirk seals to furnish him with oil
and furs in a moment of distress, had just come to his assistance by
giving him an easily procured aliment for a long time.
Another surprise awaits him.
Between the interlaced branches of his alga, he discovers a little
bottle, strongly secured with a cork and wax. It contains a fragment
of parchment, on which are traced some lines in the Spanish language.
Although he is but imperfectly acquainted with this language, though
the characters are partially effaced or scarcely legible, Selkirk, by
dint of patience and study, soon deciphers the following words:
'In the name of the Holy Trinity, to you who may read'--(here some
words were wanting,)--'greeting. My name is Jean Gons--(Gonzalve or
Gonsales; the rest of the name was illegible.) After having seen my
two sons, and almost all my fortune, swallowed up in the sea with the
vessel _Fernand Cortes_, in which I was a passenger, thrown by
shipwreck on the coasts of the Island of San Ambrosio, near Chili, I
live here alone and desolate. May God and men come to my aid!'
At the bottom of the parchment, some other characters were
perceptible, but without form, without connection, and almost entirely
destroyed by a slight mould which had collected at the bottom of the
bottle.