But in proportion as he advances towards his new conquest, it increases to his eyes, as if to testify the reality of its existence, now by a mountain peak, now by a cape.  He had seen only the profile, it now presents its face, ready to develope all its graces, all its fascinations; while its rival, disdained, abandoned, becomes by degrees effaced, and seems to wish to conceal its humiliation beneath the wave of the great ocean.

Suddenly, without any apparent jar, without any flaw of wind, on a calm sea, the stem of the tree serving as a mast vacillates, bends forward, then on one side; the roots, which fasten it to the floor of the raft, are wrenched from their hold; the sail, diverging in the same direction, still extended, drags it entirely down, and it is borne away by the wave.

Struck with astonishment, Selkirk puts his foot on the helm, and seizes his oars; but oars are powerless to move so heavy a machine.  What is to be done?

He who has not been able to endure isolation in the midst of a terrestrial paradise, from which he has just voluntarily exiled himself, must he then he reduced to have for an asylum, on the immensity of the ocean, only a few trunks of trees scarcely lashed together?

The situation is frightful, terrific; Selkirk dares not contemplate it, lest his reason should give way.  He must have a sail; a mast!  He has his spare sail; for the mast, his only resource is to detach one of the timbers which compose the frame-work of his raft.  Perhaps this will destroy its solidity; but he has no choice.

He takes the best of his hatchets, chooses among the straight stems of which his floating dwelling is composed, that which seems most suitable; he cuts away with a thousand precautions, the bonds which fasten it; he frees it, not without difficulty, from the contact of other logs to which it has been attached.  But while he devotes himself to this task, the raft, obedient to a mysterious motion of the sea, has slowly drifted on; the surface is covered with foam, as if sub-marine waves are lashing it.  Selkirk springs to the helm; the tiller breaks in his hands; he seizes the oars, they also break.  An unknown force hurries him on.  He has just fallen into one of those rapid currents which, from north to south, traverse the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Borne away in a contrary direction from that which he has hitherto pursued, the land of which he had come in search seems to fly before him.  Whither is he going?  Into what regions, into what solitudes of the sea is he to be carried, far from islands and continents?

To add to his terror, in these latitudes, where day suddenly succeeds to night and night to day, where twilight is unknown, the sun, just now shining brightly, suddenly sinks below the horizon.