Nothing! he still
ascends, the circle enlarges around him, but with no better result.
Summoning all his courage, through a thousand difficulties, climbing,
drawing himself up by the arid and abrupt rocks, piled one upon
another, he at last attains a culminating point of the mountain. He
can now embrace with his eye an immense horizon, but this immense
horizon is the sea! On his right, on his left, before him, behind him,
every where the sea!
He is not on the continent, but on an island.
This evening, exhausted with fatigue, he lies down in a grotto at the
foot of the mountain, where he passes a night full of agitation and
anxiety.
Rising with the sun, his first care, the next morning, is to examine
his riches and his provisions. He returns to the thicket of cactus and
aloes.
Besides two guns, two hatchets, a knife, an iron pot, a Bible and
nautical instruments, all articles belonging to him, he finds there a
quantity of nails, a large fragment of a sail, several horns of powder
and shot; a bag of ship biscuit, a salted quarter of pork, a little
cask of pickled fish, and a dozen cocoa-nuts.
The night before, at sight of these articles, he had supposed a
sentiment of justice and humanity to exist in the soul of the corsair.
Just now, he had said to himself that Stradling, deceived by a false
reckoning of latitude, had landed him on an island, perhaps believing
it to be a projecting shore of the continent.
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