Reckoning by the number of his fingers, it was twenty or thirty years,
and every one at first believed in the accuracy of his calculation, so
completely did his forehead, furrowed with wrinkles, his skin
blackened, withered by the sun, his hair whitened at the roots, his
gray beard, give him the aspect of an old man.
Selkirk was born in 1680; he was then only twenty-nine.
After having replied thus, he turned his head, cast a troubled look on
the objects which surrounded him; a remembrance seemed to awaken, and,
uttering a cry, stepping forward, he pointed with his finger to a
cedar on his left. It was the tree on which, when he left the
Swordfish, he had inscribed the date of his arrival in the island. The
officer Dower approached, and, notwithstanding the crumbling of the
decayed bark, could still read there this inscription:
'Alexander Selkirk--from Largo, Scotland, Oct. 27, 1704.'
His exile from the world had therefore lasted four years and three
months.
Notwithstanding the interest excited by his misfortunes, by his name,
his accent, more than by his language, Captain Rogers, an honorable
and humane man, but of extreme severity on all that appertained to
discipline, recognized him as a British subject, suspected him to be a
deserter from the English navy, and gave orders that he should be put
under guard, pending a definitive decision.
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