Marooned(15)

The former castaway, son of a leather tanner and harness maker, now entered an unfamiliar world of wealth and comfort. Rooms glowed with candles. The merchants, bankers, and ship owners Selkirk met wore clothes cut in the latest style—knee-length coats, frilled shirts, and vests of yellow, scarlet, or blue. Bright bows at the neck tied powdered wigs.

And the women—rare birds in tall hairdos, faces powdered and painted, pale arms untouched by sun. Gems sparkled in hair, around necks, on silken shoes. Their lively eyes watched the strange man who had lived on an uninhibited island.

Following Rogers's advice, Selkirk tried to talk about his four years alone. A brief mention that he wore a jacket and breeches of goatskin, however, likely brought on helpless laughter, itching and scratching, the elegant guests pretending the prickly skins touched their flesh.

Interest soon faded from their eyes. What they really wanted to hear about was the Manila galleon and all those lovely things the treasure ship had carried—gold and silver plates and wine goblets, silk stockings and gowns, swords with handles of precious gems, and more.

He was a merely an amusement, a novelty to occupy an idle hour.

Dinner was usually not served until nine o'clock—soup and fish and meat and fowl, twelve courses in all.

Should he say he had chased goats over rocks to put food in his stomach? Had watched shipmates skin and cook rats to eat? It sounded unreal. How could they understand hunger, how it made good men mean and savage?

In most homes when dinner ended, guests moved to the drawing room. Servants set up tables and the card games began—loo and faro and hazard.

The games often lasted until dawn lightened the sky. The air was then thick with pipe smoke and the women's heavy perfume. Too much brandy might have left his head woolly.

Selkirk may have found himself standing alone at a tall window overlooking a garden, perhaps thinking back to dawns on his island, the sun rising out of the Pacific, the air cool, Great Bay reflecting high pink clouds.

***

Then, out of the blue, a chance came to return to his island. A meeting with Woodes Rogers offered the possibility.

The former privateer captain now dressed in the latest fashion—scarlet coat with brass buttons, velvet breeches, black silk stockings, a wig with curls that hung to his shoulders. He had become a successful businessman, sending merchant ships loaded with cargo to the Bahama Islands, east of Florida. (In 1717 King George I was to appoint Rogers "Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over our Bahama Islands in America.")

Now that peace had been restored between England and Spain, Rogers told his former mate and comrade, a new, highly profitable venture was in the works. The South Sea Company was the idea of Sir Robert Harley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, the royal treasury. The plan was to set up trading posts along the coastal towns of South America. Rogers would be the expedition leader.

The project was big, exciting! A fleet of twenty warships—including one with eighty guns—forty cargo ships, five hospital ships, four thousand soldiers. Juan Fernández would become a supply depot. Selkirk knew the island best. Would he help set up the colony? The South Seas Company had already spent £120,000, and the Secretary of State, Henry St. John, had pledged even more government money. Investors were pouring in additional funds. Even Queen Anne was interested.

Weeks later, Rogers again met with Selkirk. His news was disappointing. Funds from the government were not coming—no, he didn't know why, no one did. It was a huge scandal. Thousands of investors had lost money. The South Seas Company was bankrupt. There would be no ships, no soldiers, no supply depot on Juan Fernández. Queen Anne and all those high government officials refused to say what had happened.

For Selkirk, any hope he might have had of returning to his island home was now gone.

***

Rogers also introduced Selkirk to Richard Steele, a journalist who had helped Rogers write his book. After hearing about Selkirk and reading Rogers's book, Steele wanted to tell the castaway's story on Juan Fernández for his magazine, The Englishman.

"I had the pleasure frequently to converse with the man soon after his arrival in England in the year 1711. It was a matter of great curiosity to hear him, as he is a man of good sense, give an account of ... that long solitude."

Steele was a member of Parliament, heavyset and limping with gout. He and Selkirk met in coffeehouses. Soon Steele saw that the former castaway seemed uneasy with his new life in London.

"[He] frequently bewailed his return to the world," Steele wrote, "which could not ... with all its enjoyments, restore him to the tranquility of his solitude" on his island.

"I am now worth 800 pounds," the despondent mariner told him, "but shall never be so happy as when I was not worth a farthing."