As for the other, that San Ambrosio which you
think so near, if it has not become a floating island since my last
voyage, if it is still where I left it, under the Tropic of Capricorn,
to reach it will not be so trifling a matter; besides, your little
bottle must be a bottle of ink. There is here confusion of place and
confusion of time; not only is _Mas a Fuera_ not _San Ambrosio_ but
this latter island, far from being a desert, as your correspondent has
said, has been inhabited more than twenty years by a multitude of
madmen, fishermen and pirates, potato-eaters and old sailors, who,
when I visited them, in 1702, politely received me with gun-shots, and
whose politeness I returned with cannon-shots. Therefore, my boy, he
who wrote to you must have been dead when you received his letter.
What date did it bear?'
'None,' said Selkirk; 'the last lines were effaced;' and he trembled
at the idea of all the dangers he had run in pursuit of this friend,
who no longer existed, and of a land which he had never inhabited.
After having satisfied a duty of humanity, that which he had regarded
as a debt contracted towards a friend, Selkirk, among other inquiries,
let fall the name of Stradling. This time, it was hatred which asked
information.
His hatred was destined to be gratified.
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