twenty years by a multitude of
madmen, fishermen and pirates, potato-eaters and old sailors, who,
when I visited them, in 1702, politely received me with gun-shots, and
whose politeness I returned with cannon-shots. Therefore, my boy, he
who wrote to you must have been dead when you received his letter.
What date did it bear?'

'None,' said Selkirk; 'the last lines were effaced;' and he trembled
at the idea of all the dangers he had run in pursuit of this friend,
who no longer existed, and of a land which he had never inhabited.

After having satisfied a duty of humanity, that which he had regarded
as a debt contracted towards a friend, Selkirk, among other inquiries,
let fall the name of Stradling. This time, it was hatred which asked
information.

His hatred was destined to be gratified.

In pursuing his voyage, after having coasted along the shores of the
Straits of Magellan, Stradling, surprised by a frightful hurricane,
had seen his vessel entirely disabled. Repulsed at five different
times, now by the tempest, now by the Spaniards, from the ports where
he attempted to take refuge, he was thrown, near La Plata, on an
inhospitable shore. Attacked, pillaged by the natives, half of his
crew having perished, with the remains of his ship he constructed
another, to which he gave the name of the Cinque Ports, instead of
that of the Swordfish, which it was no longer worthy to bear. This was
a large pinnace, on which he had secretly returned to England. For
several years past, Dampier had not heard of him.

Selkirk thought himself sufficiently avenged; his present happiness
silenced his past ill-will. He even became reconciled to his island.

Each day he traversed its divers parts, with emotions various as the
remembrances it awakened. But he was now no longer alone! Arm and arm
with Dampier, he revisited these places where he had suffered so much,
and which often resumed for him their enchanting aspects.

His companion was soon informed of his history. When he had related
what we already know, from his landing to the construction of his
raft, and to his frightful shipwreck, he at last commenced, not
without some mortification, the recital of his final miseries, which
alone could explain the deplorable state in which the English sailors
had found him.

By the loss of his hatchets, his ladder, his other instruments of
labor, condemned to inaction, to powerlessness, he had nothing to
occupy himself with but to provi