nd morose habit; as it was, I
looked at the wide ocean, and the sky, and the sun, moon, and stars,
wondering, puzzled, afraid to ask questions, and ending all by sleeping
away a large portion of my existence. We had no tools except the old
ones, which were useless--no employment of any kind. There was a book,
and I asked what it was for and what it was, but I got no answer. It
remained upon the shelf, for if I looked at it I was ordered away, and
at last I regarded it with a sort of fear, as if it were a kind of
incomprehensible animal. The day was passed in idleness and almost
silence; perhaps not a dozen sentences were exchanged in the twenty-four
hours; my companion always the same, brooding over something which
appeared ever to occupy his thoughts, and angry if roused up from his
reverie.

CHAPTER TWO.

The reader must understand that the foregoing remarks are to be
considered as referring to my position and amount of knowledge when I
was seven or eight years old. My master, as I called him, was a short
square-built man, about sixty years of age, as I afterwards estimated
from recollection and comparison. His hair fell down his back in thick
clusters and was still of a dark colour, and his beard was full two feet
long and very bushy; indeed, he was covered with hair, wherever his
person was exposed. He was, I should say, very powerful had he had
occasion to exert his strength, but with the exception of the time at
which we collected the birds, and occasionally going up the ravine to
bring down faggots of wood, he seldom moved out of the cabin, unless it
was to bathe. There was a pool of salt-water of about twenty yards
square, near the sea, but separated from it by a low ridge of rocks,
over which the waves only beat when the sea was rough and the wind on
that side of the island. Every morning almost we went down to bathe in
that pool, as it was secure from the sharks, which were very numerous.
I could swim like a fish as early as I can recollect, but whether I was
taught, or learned myself, I cannot tell. Thus was my life passed away;
my duties were trifling; I had little or nothing to employ myself about,
for I had no means of employment. I seldom heard the human voice, and
became as taciturn as my companion. My amusements were equally
confined--looking down into the depths of the ocean, as I lay over the
rocky wall which girted the major portion of the island, and watching
the motions of the fin