Suddenly the cord tightens in his hand.  He pulls again, he pulls with force; the cord resists!  Fire mounts to his brain; his sluggish blood is quickened; his heart and temples beat violently; his fever returns, but only to restore to him, at this decisive moment, his former vigor.  He hastily digs new steps in the interstices of the rock; with his hands suspending himself to the lasso, assisted by his feet, by his knees, sometimes turning, grasping the projecting roots, the angles of his wall, he at last reaches the top of the cliff.

Suddenly he feels the lasso stretch, as if about to break; a mist passes over his eyes:  his head becomes dizzy, the cord escapes his grasp.  But, by a mechanical movement, he has seized one of the highest projections of the tunnel, he holds it, he climbs,—­he is saved.

And during this perilous ascension, absorbed in the difficulties of the undertaking, attentive to himself alone, staggering, with a buzzing sound in his ears, he has not heard a sorrowful, lamentable moaning, not far from him.

Dragging hither and thither after her the rope of leather and fibre of aloes, Marimonda, rather, doubtless, by chance than by calculation, had enlaced it around the trunk of the same tree which the night before, during the storm, had agitated its dishevelled branches above the deep couch of the dying man.  This trunk had served as a point of resistance; but, during the tension, the unfortunate monkey, with her breast against the tree, had herself been caught in the folds of the lasso.

When Selkirk arrives, he finds her extended on the ground, blood and foam issuing from her mouth, and her eyes starting from their sockets.  Kneeling beside her, he loosens the bonds which still detain her.  Excited by his presence, Marimonda makes an effort to rise, but immediately falls back, uttering a new cry of pain.

With his heart full of anguish, taking her in his arms, Selkirk, not without a painful effort, not without being obliged to pause on the way to recover his strength, carries her to the dwelling on the shore.

This shore he finds deserted and in confusion.

Deprived of their daily nourishment during the prolonged absence of their master, the goats have made a passage through the inclosure, by gnawing the still green foliage which imprisoned them; the hurricane of the night has overthrown the rest.  Before leaving, they had ravaged the garden, destroyed the promises of the approaching harvest, and devoured even the bark of the young trees.  The cats have followed the goats.  Selkirk has before his eyes a spectacle of desolation; his props, his trellises, the remains of his orchard, of his inclosure, of his shed, a part even of the roof of his cabin, strew the earth in confusion around him.

But it is not this which occupies him now.  He has prepared for Marimonda a bed beside his own; he takes care of her, he watches over her, he leaves her only to seek in the woods, or on the mountains, the herb which may heal her; he brings all sorts, and by armfuls, that she may choose;—­does she not know them better than himself?