Marooned(7)

Goats also provided a way to replace his torn clothes.

"I made [myself] a coat and cap of goat skins, which [I] stitched together with little thongs of the same, that [I] cut with my knife." He poked eyelets with a sliver of metal, ground to a point on stone, and joined the skins with sinew. Goatskin provided the material for leggings to protect against thorns and bushes and for a jacket and breeches.

As he grew to know his island, he felt more comfortable. "[I] came at last to conquer all the inconveniences of [my] solitude and to be very easy," he said.

But there were days when the island's quiet grew heavy. He had no living soul to talk to. Moody and dispirited, he wondered what God had in mind, imprisoning him on this remote island.

These melancholy periods, however, came about less and less as the weeks passed and his contentment continued to grow. He found his temper moderating. His angry outbursts at trees and sky for the injustice of his lot ceased.

He counted the days by cutting notches into tree limbs. Every seventh day he declared a Sunday and observed with special readings from the Bible.

***

The island's goats provided him with fresh meat. Came the day, though, when he fired his last bullet and finished the end of the meat salted and hung in his kitchen hut. Now he had no way to take an animal.

Walking near a stream one day, he spotted a young goat. He dropped his walking staff and chased it. His running ability surprised him. Could he capture a full-grown goat?

At first he could catch only those goats he chased into a dead-end gully or onto a rocky crag. In those places the goat couldn't escape.

But as weeks passed, his "speed of foot" increased. When his shoes finally rotted and fell apart, he went without. The soles of his feet grew hard as leather.

"My way of living and continual exercise of running strengthen'd me, so that I ran with a wonderful swiftness thro the woods and up the hills and rocks, and was able to capture the strongest and nimblest goat inside a few minutes."

He lifted each bleating and struggling prize, slung it across his shoulders, and carried it to his kitchen hut where he had built a pen of strong sticks pounded into the ground.

Despite his growing ease on the island, it was an accident with a goat that showed him how alone he truly was.

Selkirk had chased the animal up a slope. The goat hid in a clump of bushes. He dove into the scrub and grabbed the goat, unaware that the bushes hid a ledge. Over he plunged, the goat in his arms.

Hours later, "stunned and bruis'd," he felt consciousness returning. Slowly he became aware that dusk was falling. The dead goat was under him. It had cushioned the shock of his fall.

He could barely move his head or lift an arm. Night came. He lay cold and alone in the dark.

In the morning he crawled down the slope to his hut "about a mile distant." There he "lay senseless for the space of three days." The fire burned low and went out. Without it, nights were dark and chill.

Ten more days passed before he could stand. It was a harsh lesson. He was reminded again that he was utterly alone. He had no one to depend on but himself.

As soon as he was able to move about, he caught several young goats and placed them in the pen. Who could tell? Another fall, an illness, might confine him to the hut. Unable to hunt food, he would grow weak and starve.

***

Sometime in mid-summer, sea lions waddled onto the beach to mate. Selkirk decided to find out if the meat of a sea lion was edible. If so, it would make a welcome change in his meals.

The sea lions were large. Some were monsters "above 20 feet long" and weighed not less than "two ton." They fought over the smaller seals by swatting one another with their heavy tails. The beasts were "capable of seizing or breaking the limbs of a man."

Gathering his courage, he approached a sea lion on the edge of the pack. It roared and charged "like an angry dog." Selkirk danced away.

Armed with his walking staff, he again approached, poking and swatting the animal across its tender nose, driving it back. As he edged closer, it charged again. But this time, instead of retreating, he dodged the clumsy charge and stepped alongside the beast between head and tail. The animal was unable to reach him with either jaws or thrashing tail.

Selkirk pulled his hatchet from his belt. A single blow to the back of the animal's head dropped it.

He had hoped for thick steaks. After roasting the flesh of the sea lion, however, he found it too oily to eat—the meat was buried under a seventeen-inch layer of fat. But the "hair of [its] whiskers was stiff enough to make exceedingly fine toothpickers."

Young seals, though, proved more to his taste, "as good as English lamb." Their boiled fat provided cooking oil. When cooled, it served as butter spread on a cabbage leaf.