’So much the worse rather, my friend; for, would you believe it, the old monster, bent double as he is with age and rheumatism, was bright enough to dupe me finely; to dupe me twice.  In the first place, by making me believe you were dead when you were not.  But he well knew, the cheat, that if I refused him once, it was because my views were turned in your direction.’

Selkirk made a movement which escaped Catherine; she continued: 

’His second deception was to arrive here in triumph, in the midst of the cries of joy and embraces of the Sea-Dogs and Old Pilots.  One would have thought he had in his pockets all the mines of Guinea and Peru.  He did not say so, but I thought it could not be otherwise; and I married him, since I believed you no longer living.  His trick having succeeded, he then told me of his shipwreck, his complete ruin.  Ah! with what a good heart would I have sent him packing!  But it was too late, and it became necessary that the Royal Salmon, founded by the honorable Andrew Felton, should furnish subsistence for two; and this is the reason why, Mr. Selkirk, you find me still here, a prisoner in my bar, and cursing all the captains who make the tour of the world only to come afterwards and impose upon poor and inexperienced young girls!’

Selkirk had not at first understood the lamentations of Catherine; but a twilight commenced to dawn in his ideas; he divined that his name had been used for an act of baseness; and, without being able to account for it, he felt the return of an old leaven of spite, an old hatred revived.

‘Who is your husband?  What is his name?’ asked he, in a loud voice and with a tone of authority.

’Do not grow angry, Sandy?  Do not seek a quarrel with him now.  What is done, is done; I am his wife, do you understand?  It is of no use to recall the past.’

‘And who thinks of recalling it?  I simply asked you who he was?’

’You will be prudent; you promise me?  Well! do you see him yonder, in the second stall, at the same place he formerly occupied?  He has just poured out some gin to those sailors, and is drinking with them.  It is he who is standing up with an apron on.’

‘Stradling!’ exclaimed Selkirk, with sparkling eyes.  But at the sight of this apron, finding his old captain become a waiter, his hatred and projects of vengeance were suddenly extinguished.

Alexander Selkirk returned to England in 1712.  The history of his captivity in the Island of Juan Fernandez had appeared in the papers; several apocryphal relations had been already published, when in 1717, Daniel De Foe published his Robinson Crusoe.

He is really the same personage; but in this latter version, the Island of Juan Fernandez, in spite of distance and geographical impossibilities, is peopled with savage Caribs; Marimonda is transformed into the simple Friday; history is turned into romance, but this romance is elevated to all the dignity of a philosophical treatise.