fishness; that disdainful heart, hitherto invincibly closed, at
last experiences friendship, or at least aspires to do so.

At last, the day arrives when the sea, inundating the marshes, bending
the mangroves, reaches, on the sandy platform, one of the corners of
his raft.

Selkirk hastens to transport thither his hatchets, his guns, his
seal-skins and goat-skins, his Bible, his spy-glass, his pipes, his
ladder, his stools, even his traps; all his riches! it is a complete
removal.

On taking possession of the island, he had engraved on the bark of
several trees the date of his arrival; he now inscribes upon them the
day of his departure. For many months his reckoning has been
interrupted; to determine the date is impossible; he knows only the
day of the week.

When the wave had entirely raised his barque, aiding himself with one
of the long oars to propel it over the rocky bottom, he gained the
sea. Then, after having adjusted his sail, with his hand on the helm,
he turned towards his island to address to it an adieu, laden with
maledictions rather than regrets.

Swelled by a south-east wind, the sail pursues its course towards that
other land, the object of his new desires. At the expiration of some
hours, by the aid of his glass, what from the summit of his mountains
had appeared to him only a dark point, a rock beaten by the waves,
seems already enlarged, allowing him to see high hills covered with
verdure. He has not then deceived himself! There exists a habitable
land,--habitable for two! It has served as a refuge to the shipwrecked
man, to his friend! Ah! how impatient he is to reach this shore where
he is to meet him!

Several hours more of a slow but peaceful navigation roll away. He has
arrived at a distance almost midway between the point of departure and
that of arrival. Looking alternately at the islands Selkirk and San
Ambrosio, both illuminated by the sunset, with their indefinite forms,
their bases buried in the waves, their terraced summits, veiled with a
light fog, they appear like the reflection of each other. But for the
discovery which he had previously made of the second, he would have
believed this was his own island, or rather its image, represented in
the waters of the sea.

But in proportion as he advances towards his new conquest, it
increases to his eyes, as if to testify the reality of its existence,
now by a mountain peak, now by a cape. He had seen only the profile,
it now present