Others preferred to imagine in this singular personage the acephalous man, the man without a head, named by the grave Baumgarthen as existing on the new continent.  They had not discovered many legs, but neither had they discovered a head; why should he have one?

And the discussion continued, and not a voice was raised to risk this judicious observation; if neither head nor limbs have been distinguished, it may perhaps be because he has been seen only in the dark.

The next day, each wished to be satisfied; a regular hunt was organized against this phenomenon; they set out, invaded his retreat, pursued him, surrounded him, at last seized him, and the brave sailors of Great Britain discovered with stupefaction, in this monopedous, acephalous man, in this satyr, this cercopithecus, what?  A countryman, a Scotchman, a subject of Queen Anne!

It was Selkirk; Selkirk, his hair long and in disorder, his limbs encased in fragments of skins, and half deprived of his reason.

His island was Juan Fernandez, so called by the first navigator who discovered it; this was Selkirk Island.

When he was conducted before Captain Woodes Rogers, commander of the expedition, to the interrogations of the latter, the unfortunate man, with downcast look, and agitated with a nervous trembling, replied only by repeating mechanically the last syllables of the phrases which were addressed to him by the captain.

A little recovered from his agitation, discovering that he had Englishmen to deal with, he attempted to pronounce some words; he could only mutter a few incoherent and disconnected sentences.

‘Solitude and the care of providing for his subsistence,’ says Paw, ’had so occupied his mind, that all rational ideas were effaced from it.  As savage as the animals, and perhaps more so, he had almost entirely forgotten the secret of articulating intelligible sounds.’

Captain Rogers having asked him how long he had been secluded in this island, Selkirk remained silent; he nevertheless understood the question, for his eyes immediately opened with terror, as if he had just measured the long space of time which his exile had lasted.  He was far from having an exact idea of it; he appreciated it only by the sufferings he had endured there, and, looking fixedly at his hands, he opened and shut them several times.

Reckoning by the number of his fingers, it was twenty or thirty years, and every one at first believed in the accuracy of his calculation, so completely did his forehead, furrowed with wrinkles, his skin blackened, withered by the sun, his hair whitened at the roots, his gray beard, give him the aspect of an old man.

Selkirk was born in 1680; he was then only twenty-nine.

After having replied thus, he turned his head, cast a troubled look on the objects which surrounded him; a remembrance seemed to awaken, and, uttering a cry, stepping forward, he pointed with his finger to a cedar on his left.  It was the tree on which, when he left the Swordfish, he had inscribed the date of his arrival in the island.  The officer Dower approached, and, notwithstanding the crumbling of the decayed bark, could still read there this inscription: