ficient,--when Marimonda, exhausted with
lassitude, seated on the verge of the tunnel, persists in remaining
motionless, he has recourse to projectiles. To compel her to second
him in his work, the possible realization of which he himself scarcely
comprehends, he throws at her some fragments of stone detached from
his rocky wall, and even the remains of that repast for which he is
indebted to her. Even when she is at a distance, informed by the
movements of the lasso of the direction she has taken, he pursues her
still.

Suddenly the cord tightens in his hand. He pulls again, he pulls with
force; the cord resists! Fire mounts to his brain; his sluggish blood
is quickened; his heart and temples beat violently; his fever returns,
but only to restore to him, at this decisive moment, his former vigor.
He hastily digs new steps in the interstices of the rock; with his
hands suspending himself to the lasso, assisted by his feet, by his
knees, sometimes turning, grasping the projecting roots, the angles of
his wall, he at last reaches the top of the cliff.

Suddenly he feels the lasso stretch, as if about to break; a mist
passes over his eyes: his head becomes dizzy, the cord escapes his
grasp. But, by a mechanical movement, he has seized one of the highest
projections of the tunnel, he holds it, he climbs,--he is saved.

And during this perilous ascension, absorbed in the difficulties of
the undertaking, attentive to himself alone, staggering, with a
buzzing sound in his ears, he has not heard a sorrowful, lamentable
moaning, not far from him.

Dragging hither and thither after her the rope of leather and fibre of
aloes, Marimonda, rather, doubtless, by chance than by calculation,
had enlaced it around the trunk of the same tree which the night
before, during the storm, had agitated its dishevelled branches above
the deep couch of the dying man. This trunk had served as a point of
resistance; but, during the tension, the unfortunate monkey, with her
breast against the tree, had herself been caught in the folds of the
lasso.

When Selkirk arrives, he finds her extended on the ground, blood and
foam issuing from her mouth, and her eyes starting from their sockets.
Kneeling beside her, he loosens the bonds which still detain her.
Excited by his presence, Marimonda makes an effort to rise, but
immediately falls back, uttering a new cry of pain.

With his heart full of anguish, taking her in his arms, Selkirk, not
without