An hour
after, the accursed race are multiplying round him, more numerous and
more ravenous than ever.
He comprehends then what an error he has committed in the complete
destruction of the wild cats which peopled the island. With the most
generous intentions, how often is man mistaken in the object he
pursues! We think we are ridding us of an enemy, and we are depriving
ourselves of a protector. God only knows what he does, and he has
admitted apparent evil, as a principle, into the admirable composition
of his universe; he suffers the wicked to live. Selkirk had been more
severe than God, and he repents it. If his poor cats had only been
exiled, he would hasten to proclaim a general amnesty. Alas! there is
no amnesty with death. But has he indeed destroyed all? Perhaps some
still exist in those distant regions which have already served as a
refuge for that other banished race, the seals.
The rains have ceased; the storms of winter, always accompanied by
overpowering heat and dense fogs, no longer sadden the island by
anticipated darkness, or the gloomy mutterings 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.
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