This is the
incontestable truth, from which, in his pride, Selkirk had turned
away.
Deprived of exercise and of aliment, his thoughts, no longer sustained
by reading the Holy Book, were day by day lost in a chaos of dreams
and reveries.
A prey to terrors which he could not explain, he feared darkness, he
trembled at the slightest sound of the wind among the branches; if it
blew violently, he thought the trees would be uprooted and crush him;
if the sea roared, he trembled at the idea of the submersion of his
entire island.
When he traversed the woods, especially if the heat was great, he
often heard, distinctly, voices which called him or replied. He caught
entire phrases; others remained unfinished. These phrases, connected
neither with his thoughts nor his situation, were strange to him.
Sometimes he even recognized the voice.
Now it was that of Catherine, scolding her servants; now that of
Stradling, of Dampier, or one of his college tutors. Once he heard
thus the voice of one of his classmates whom he least remembered; at
another time it was that of his old admiral, Rourke, uttering the
words of command.
If he attempted to raise his own to impose silence on these choruses
of demons who tormented him, it was only with painful efforts that he
could succeed in articulating some confused syllables.
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