Chapter X

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.