One of those unaccountable fits of terror, which were now more
frequent than formerly, seized him, and he precipitately descended the
mountain, springing from peak to peak along the rocks.
The religious sentiment, which formerly sustained Selkirk in his
trials, was not entirely extinct; but it was obscured beneath his
darkened reason. His religion was only that of fear. When the sea was
violently agitated, when the storm howled, he prostrated himself with
clasped hands; but it was no longer God whom he implored; it was the
angry ocean, the thunder. He sought to disarm the genius of evil. The
lightning having one day struck, not far from him, a date-palm, he
worshipped the tree. His perverted faith had at last terminated in
idolatry.
This was, in substance, what Alexander Selkirk related to William
Dampier; what solitude had done for this man, still so young, and
formerly so intelligent; this was what had become of the despiser of
men, when left to his own reason.
Dampier listened with the most profound attention, interrupting him in
his narrative only by exclamations of interest or of pity. When he
ceased to speak, holding out his hand to him, he said:
'My boy, the lesson is a rude one, but let it be profitable to you;
let it teach you that _ennui_ on board a vessel, even with a
Stradling, is better than _ennui_ in a desert.
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