ings of continual thunder.
The sun, though _garue_[1] absorbs the remainder of the inundation.
Followed by Marimonda, Selkirk, for the first time, has ventured to
the woods and thickets between the hills beyond the shore and the
False Coquimbo, when a sound, sweeter to his ear than would have been
the songs of a siren, makes him pause suddenly in ecstasy: it is the
mewing of a cat.

[Footnote 1: In Peru and Chili, they call _garua_ that mist which
sometimes, and especially after the rainy season, floats around the
disk of the sun.]

This cat, strongly built, with a spotted and glossy coat, white nose,
and brown whiskers, is stationed at a little distance, on a red cedar,
where she is undoubtedly watching her prey.

She is an old settler escaped from the general massacre; the last of
the vanquished; perhaps!

Without hesitation, Selkirk clasps the trunk of the tree, climbs it,
reaches the first branches; Marimonda follows him and quickly goes
beyond. At the aspect of these two aggressors, like herself clad in
skin, the cat recoils, ascending; the monkey follows, pursues her from
branch to branch, quite to the top of the cedar. Struck on the
shoulder with a blow of the claw, she also recoils, but descending,
and declaring herself vanquished in the first skirmish, immediately
gives over the combat, or rather the sport, for she has seen only
sport in the affair.

Selkirk is not so easily discouraged; this cat he must have, he must
have her alive; he wishes to make her the guardian of his cabin, his
protector against the rats. Three times he succeeds in seizing her;
three times the furious animal, struggling, tears his arms or face. It
is a terrible, bloody conflict, mingled with exclamations, growlings,
and frightful mewings. At last Selkirk, forgetting perhaps in the
ardor of combat the object of victory, seizes her vigorously by the
skin of the neck, at the risk of strangling her; with the other hand
he grasps her around the body. The difficulty is now to carry her.
Fortunately he has his game-bag. With one hand he holds her pressed
against the fork of the tree; with the other arm he reaches his
game-bag, opens it; the conquered animal, half dead, has not made,
during this manoeuvre, a single movement of resistance. But when the
hunter is about to close it, suddenly rousing herself with a leap,
distending by a last effort all her muscles at once, she escapes from
his grasp, and precipitates herself from the top of