. Stockings and shoes I had none, but I had
made a pair of somethings, I scarce knew what to call them, to slip over
my legs; a jacket, with the skirts coming down to the middle of my
thighs, and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same, completing my
outfit. I had a broad belt of goat's skin, and in this I hung, on one
side, a saw, on the other, a hatchet. Under my arm hung two pouches for
shot and powder; at my back I carried my basket, on my shoulder my gun,
and over my head a great clumsy goat's skin umbrella.

A stoic would have smiled to have seen me at dinner. There was my
majesty, prince and lord of the whole island. How like a king I dined,
too, all alone, attended by my servants! Poll, my parrot, as if he had
been my favourite, was the only person permitted to talk to me. My old
dog sat at my right hand, and two cats on each side of the table,
expecting a bit from my hand as a mark of special favour.

_III.--The Footprint_

It was my custom to make daily excursions to some part of the island.
One day, walking along the beach, I was exceedingly surprised with the
print of a man's naked foot plainly impressed on the sand. I stood like
one thunderstruck. I listened, I looked around, but I could hear nothing
nor see anything. I went up to a rising ground to look further; I walked
backwards and forwards on the shore, but I could see only that one
impression.

I went to it again. There was exactly a foot--toes, heel, and every part
of a foot. How it came thither I knew not; but I hurried home, looking
behind me at every two or three steps, and mistaking every bush and
tree, fancying every stump to be a man. I had no sleep that night; but
my terror gradually wore off, and after some days I ventured down to the
beach to take measure of the footprint by my own.

I found it much larger! This filled me again with all manner of fears,
and when I went home I began to prepare against an attack. I got out my
muskets, loaded them, and went to an enormous amount of labour and
trouble--all because I had seen the print of a naked foot on the sand.
There seemed to me then no labour too great, no task too toilsome, and I
made me a second fortification, and planted a vast number of stakes on
the outside of my outer wall, which grew and became a thick grove of
trees, entirely concealing the place of my retreat, and adding greatly
to my security.

I had now been twenty-two years on the island, and had grown so
accustomed