n the midst of which this was most
prominent:--Yet alive, already forgotten by the world, I have seen my
traces disappear, even from this island which I have so long
inhabited!

A rustling was heard in the foliage; he raised his eyes, expecting to
see Marimonda swinging on the branch of a tree. Perceiving nothing, he
remembered that Marimonda reposed at the Oasis; he took the road from
the mountain which led thither, but when he arrived there, when he was
before her tomb, covered with tall grass, he had forgotten why he
came.

One of those unaccountable fits of terror, which were now more
frequent than formerly, seized him, and he precipitately descended the
mountain, springing from peak to peak along the rocks.

The religious sentiment, which formerly sustained Selkirk in his
trials, was not entirely extinct; but it was obscured beneath his
darkened reason. His religion was only that of fear. When the sea was
violently agitated, when the storm howled, he prostrated himself with
clasped hands; but it was no longer God whom he implored; it was the
angry ocean, the thunder. He sought to disarm the genius of evil. The
lightning having one day struck, not far from him, a date-palm, he
worshipped the tree. His perverted faith had at last terminated in
idolatry.

This was, in substance, what Alexander Selkirk related to William
Dampier; what solitude had done for this man, still so young, and
formerly so intelligent; this was what had become of the despiser of
men, when left to his own reason.

Dampier listened with the most profound attention, interrupting him in
his narrative only by exclamations of interest or of pity. When he
ceased to speak, holding out his hand to him, he said:

'My boy, the lesson is a rude one, but let it be profitable to you;
let it teach you that _ennui_ on board a vessel, even with a
Stradling, is better than _ennui_ in a desert. Undoubtedly there are
among us troublesome, wicked people, but fewer wicked than
crack-brained. Believe, then, in friendship, especially in mine; from
this day it is yours, on the faith of William Dampier.'

And he opened his arms to the young man, who threw himself into them.

On their return to the vessel, Dampier presented to Selkirk his own
Bible. The latter seized it with avidity, and, after having turned
over its leaves as if to find a text which presented itself to his
mind, read aloud the following passage:

'He was driven from the sons of men; and his