But in proportion as he advances towards his new conquest, it
increases to his eyes, as if to testify the reality of its existence,
now by a mountain peak, now by a cape. He had seen only the profile,
it now presents its face, ready to develope all its graces, all its
fascinations; while its rival, disdained, abandoned, becomes by
degrees effaced, and seems to wish to conceal its humiliation beneath
the wave of the great ocean.
Suddenly, without any apparent jar, without any flaw of wind, on a
calm sea, the stem of the tree serving as a mast vacillates, bends
forward, then on one side; the roots, which fasten it to the floor of
the raft, are wrenched from their hold; the sail, diverging in the
same direction, still extended, drags it entirely down, and it is
borne away by the wave.
Struck with astonishment, Selkirk puts his foot on the helm, and
seizes his oars; but oars are powerless to move so heavy a machine.
What is to be done?
He who has not been able to endure isolation in the midst of a
terrestrial paradise, from which he has just voluntarily exiled
himself, must he then he reduced to have for an asylum, on the
immensity of the ocean, only a few trunks of trees scarcely lashed
together?
The situation is frightful, terrific; Selkirk dares not contemplate
it, lest his reason should give way.
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