her tree, sad, but still
gentle and caressing, and with gestures of terror, points to the
grotto. He runs thither.

Here another spectacle of disorder and destruction awaits him; the
rats are collected in it by thousands; his furs, his provisions of
fruit and game, his bottles formerly filled with oil, every thing is
sacked, torn in pieces, afloat; for the water has at last made its way
through the crevices of the mountain. To put the climax to his
misfortune, his reserve of powder, notwithstanding its double envelope
of leather and horn, attacked by the voracious teeth of his
aggressors, is swimming in the midst of an oily slime.

The solitary now possesses, for the purpose of hunting, for the
renewal of these provisions so necessary to his life, only the few
charges contained in his portable powder-horn, and in the barrels of
his guns. The blow which has just struck him is his ruin! and still
the hardest trial appointed for him is yet to come.

In penetrating the ground, the rains of winter have driven the rats
from their holes; hence their invasion of the cabin and the grotto.

Against so many enemies, what can Selkirk do, reduced to his single
strength?

He succeeds, nevertheless, in killing some; Marimonda herself, armed
with the branch of a tree, serves as an ally, and aids him in putting
them to flight; but their combined efforts are ineffectual. An hour
after, the accursed race are multiplying round him, more numerous and
more ravenous than ever.

He comprehends then what an error he has committed in the complete
destruction of the wild cats which peopled the island. With the most
generous intentions, how often is man mistaken in the object he
pursues! We think we are ridding us of an enemy, and we are depriving
ourselves of a protector. God only knows what he does, and he has
admitted apparent evil, as a principle, into the admirable composition
of his universe; he suffers the wicked to live. Selkirk had been more
severe than God, and he repents it. If his poor cats had only been
exiled, he would hasten to proclaim a general amnesty. Alas! there is
no amnesty with death. But has he indeed destroyed all? Perhaps some
still exist in those distant regions which have already served as a
refuge for that other banished race, the seals.

The rains have ceased; the storms of winter, always accompanied by
overpowering heat and dense fogs, no longer sadden the island by
anticipated darkness, or the gloomy mutter