The latter, having tacked several times, as if to get before the
wind, hastily changed her course and stood out to sea.
Selkirk remains stupefied, overwhelmed. 'These are Spaniards,'
murmured he, after a moment's hesitation; 'what matters it! Am I now
their enemy? I am only a colonist, an exile, a deserter from the
English navy. They owe me protection, assistance, as a Christian. If
they required it, I would serve on board their vessel! But they have
gone; what method shall I employ to recall them, to signalize my
presence?'
There was but one; it was to kindle a large fire on the shore or on
the hill. He needs hewn wood, and his supplies are exhausted; what is
to be done?
For an instant, in his disturbed mind, the idea arises to tear the
lattice-work from his inclosure, the pillars and the roof from his
shed, to pile them around his cabin, and set fire to the whole.
This idea he quickly repulses, but it suffices to show what passed in
the inner folds of the heart of this man, who had just now forced
himself to believe that happiness was yet possible for him.
On farther reflection, he remembers that behind his grotto, on one of
the first terraces of the mountain, there is a dense thicket, where
the trees, embarrassed with vines and dry briers, closely interwoven,
calcined by the burning reflections of the sun on the rock which
surrounds them, present a collection of dead branches and mouldy
trunks, scarcely masked by the semblance of vegetation.
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