Selkirk utters a cry, springs from his couch, and immediately crushes two under his heels.  The rest take flight.

As he is pursuing these new invaders with the shovel and musket, he perceives at a few paces’ distance Marimonda, sorrowful and drooping, perched on the strong branch of a sapota-tree.  By her piteous and chilly appearance, her tangled and wet hair, he doubts not but she has passed the whole night exposed to the inclemency of the weather.  But he at first attributes this whim only to her ill-humor the evening before.

On perceiving him, Marimonda descends, from her tree, sad, but still gentle and caressing, and with gestures of terror, points to the grotto.  He runs thither.

Here another spectacle of disorder and destruction awaits him; the rats are collected in it by thousands; his furs, his provisions of fruit and game, his bottles formerly filled with oil, every thing is sacked, torn in pieces, afloat; for the water has at last made its way through the crevices of the mountain.  To put the climax to his misfortune, his reserve of powder, notwithstanding its double envelope of leather and horn, attacked by the voracious teeth of his aggressors, is swimming in the midst of an oily slime.

The solitary now possesses, for the purpose of hunting, for the renewal of these provisions so necessary to his life, only the few charges contained in his portable powder-horn, and in the barrels of his guns.  The blow which has just struck him is his ruin! and still the hardest trial appointed for him is yet to come.

In penetrating the ground, the rains of winter have driven the rats from their holes; hence their invasion of the cabin and the grotto.

Against so many enemies, what can Selkirk do, reduced to his single strength?

He succeeds, nevertheless, in killing some; Marimonda herself, armed with the branch of a tree, serves as an ally, and aids him in putting them to flight; but their combined efforts are ineffectual.  An hour after, the accursed race are multiplying round him, more numerous and more ravenous than ever.

He comprehends then what an error he has committed in the complete destruction of the wild cats which peopled the island.  With the most generous intentions, how often is man mistaken in the object he pursues!  We think we are ridding us of an enemy, and we are depriving ourselves of a protector.  God only knows what he does, and he has admitted apparent evil, as a principle, into the admirable composition of his universe; he suffers the wicked to live.  Selkirk had been more severe than God, and he repents it.  If his poor cats had only been exiled, he would hasten to proclaim a general amnesty.  Alas! there is no amnesty with death.  But has he indeed destroyed all?  Perhaps some still exist in those distant regions which have already served as a refuge for that other banished race, the seals.