It is the songster, hastening to rejoin his companion.
Selkirk has never known love. Once perhaps,--in a fit of youth and
delirium; and it was this false love which tore him from his studies,
from his country!
Ah! why did he not remain at Largo, with his father? To-day he also
would have had a companion! In that smiling country where coolness
dwells, where labor is so easy, life so sweet and calm, the paternal
roof would have sheltered his happiness! Oh! the joys of his infancy!
his green and sunny Scotland.
The regrets which arise in his heart he quickly banishes; his dear
remembrances he sacrifices to God; he weaves them into a fervent
prayer.
Very soon an approaching bleating rouses him again from his
abstractions. A goat, with restless eye, has just stretched her head
over the edge of the precipice, and for an instant fixes on him her
astonished glance. Then, as if re-assured, defying his powerlessness,
with a disdainful lip she quietly crops some tufts of grass growing on
the verge of the tunnel.
On seeing her, Selkirk instinctively lays his hand on the lasso which
is beside him.
'If I succeed in reaching her, in catching her,' said he, 'her blood
will quench the thirst which devours me, her flesh will appease my
hunger. But of what use would it be? Whence can I expect aid and
succor for my deliverance? This would then only prolong my
sufferings.
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