As he is in despair, a whistling familiar to his ear is heard, and at two hundred paces distant he perceives, on an eminence of the False Coquimbo, his monkey, bent double, in an attitude of contemplation, appearing very attentive to what is passing beneath her, and changing her posture only to send a repeated summons to her master.

At all hazards he directs himself to this quarter.

What a spectacle awaits him!  In a cavity at the foot of the eminence where Marimonda is, he finds, crouching, still out of breath with her struggle and her race, his fugitive.  She is a mother! and six kittens, already active, are rolling in the sun around her.

Selkirk, seizing his knife, kills the mother, and carries off the little ones.

A short time after, the rats have deserted the shore.  But their departure, though it prevents the evil they might yet have done, does not remedy that already accomplished.

The provisions of the solitary are almost entirely destroyed, and the little powder which remains is scarcely sufficient for a reserve which he no longer knows where to renew.

The moment at last comes when he possesses no other ammunition than the only charge in his gun.  This last charge, his last resource, oh! how preciously he preserves it to-day.  While it is there, he can still believe himself armed, still powerful; he has not entirely exhausted his resources; it is his last hope.  Who knows?—­perhaps he may yet need it to protect his life in circumstances which he cannot foresee.

But since his gun must remain suspended, inactive, to the walls of his cabin, it is time to think of supplying the place of the services it has rendered; it is time to realize his dream, and, according to the usual course of civilization, to substitute the life of a farmer and shepherd for that of a hunter.

Already is his colony augmented by six new guests, domesticated in his house; already, on every side, his seeds are peeping out of the ground under the most favorable auspices; his young trees, firmly rooted, are growing rapidly beneath the double influence of heat and moisture; at the axil of some of their leaves, he sees a bud, an earnest of the harvest.  He must now occupy himself with the means of surprising, seizing and retaining the ancestors of his future flock.

Here, patience, address or stratagem can alone avail.

Notwithstanding his natural agility, he does not dream of reaching them by pursuit.  Since his last hunts, goats and kids keep themselves usually in the steep and mountainous parts of the island.  To leap from rock to rock, to attempt to vie with them in celerity and lightness appears to him, with reason, a foolish and impracticable enterprise.  Later, perhaps,...  Who knows?

He manufactures snares, traps; but suspicion is now the order of the day around him; each holds himself on the qui vive.  After long waiting without any result, he finds in his snares a coati, some little Guinea pigs; here is one resource, undoubtedly, but he aims at higher game, and the kids will not allow themselves to be taken by his baits.