Marooned

by Robert Andrew Parker

  Lonely beyond belief, he picked up his musket. It was still loaded with powder and a single shot, his defense against savages who had never appeared. One pull of the trigger would solve the problem of being alone. Was this why Stradling had ordered the musket? he must have wondered. Sweet revenge on his rebellious mate who dared question his orders?

  Shaking, he thrust the musket clattering onto the rocks and made the decision to live.

  ***

  After weeks on the beach, Selkirk decided he needed better shelter. The open hut of poles and sailcloth was too flimsy to protect against wind and blowing rain.

  Caves above a line of trees offered a possibility. Trudging up the wooded slope, he looked into each one. The opening of the cave he chose was ten feet high. The ferns and weeds growing from the walls didn't appeal, but the hollow entrance offered a special advantage: a high lookout over the bay, a place to watch for a ship.

  He carried his sea chest and few belongings up from the beach. Gathering ferns, he spread them on the rocky floor to form a mattress.

  In front of the cave he piled rocks. Then he cut thorny branches from bushes and arranged them in front of the rocks. The rock wall, the thorns, and a bright fire at the entrance would hold wild beasts at bay. (Selkirk was as yet unaware that the most ferocious animals on the island were goats.)

  The cave offered shelter from wind and rain but was damp and uncomfortable. In the mornings his arms and face were often dusted with dirt that had sifted down. A rain shower during the day might cause the ferns and weeds to drip cold water at night. It's likely he was frequently chilled, thus adding to his misery.

  No matter how poorly he felt, though, hunger forced him from the cave each day on a desperate search for food. Sometimes he dug roots to boil into a broth. He tasted cautiously—especially when he found wild berries or bird eggs—fearful of making himself sick or even poisoning himself.

  On the beach he spotted a sea turtle crawling from the water. Flipping the creature onto its back, he quickly dispatched it with his hatchet. Cutting the tender meat into strips, he hung them in the sun to dry. The sweet meat provided a welcome relief from his diet of lobster, clams, and mussels.

  Hunger was a daily problem, but so was the heavy silence of the island, especially at noon, when the sun was high. When loneliness grew too heavy, he emerged from the cave, singing hymns he had learned as a boy in the Presbyterian church in Largo. "There's an end of an auld [old] song," he shouted defiantly as a hymn ended, then beginning another.

  He prayed aloud, bearing "up against melancholy and the terror of being left alone in a desolate place," and wept helplessly, half mad from the solitude. He feared his mind was slipping. He longed to hear a human voice.

  ***

  He slept whole days away. Sleep was his only escape. Awake, he whistled Scottish folk tunes, a human sound in the island's stillness.

  In the cave, gazing into the firelight, Alexander Selkirk may have thought of his family in Largo. Come to the shop, learn the business, his father, John, had offered. But cobbling shoes for the villagers and harnesses for their horses didn't appeal. That was why he had run away to sea.

  His last day at home had not been pleasant. He had fought with his feeble-minded brother, Andrew. When he asked the boy to fetch a pail of water from the well, Andrew brought seawater from the bay.

  Alexander gagged and sputtered. Furious, he grabbed a walking staff, swatted the giggling boy, and was wrestled to the floor by his father.

  Neighbors reported a "tumult" in the house, his cousin John Howell later recorded. Church elders ordered Alexander to appear "before the face of the congregation" and scolded him for his "scandalous behavior." Humiliated, he made "public acknowledgment of his sin" and promised to mend his ways.

  That was how he remembered Andrew.

  His mother, Euphan, a loving woman who had given him the Bible to accompany him on his travels, likely brought tender thoughts. What would she think now if she could see him with a scraggly beard, sitting in a cave, staring into a fire burning bright against wild animals?...

  Late one night he was startled awake by savage sounds—growls, snorts, barks, bellows—coming from the beach. He threw sticks on the fire, grabbed the musket, and crouched against the cave wall. Night magnified his terror—he could barely see over the flames into the darkness. An onshore breeze carried a sickening stench, like dead fish rotting in the sun.

  Daylight revealed the source of the awful sounds. During the night hundreds of seals had invaded the beach. In the bay he could see more heads swimming toward shore. Juan Fernández was the island the animals returned to each year to breed and give birth to their young.

  Their "dreadful howlings," he would later recall, were too terrible for human ears.

  ***

  With the beach occupied for weeks by the seals—"they lin'd the shore very thick for above half a mile"—he could no longer gather seafood. Still, hunger drove him daily from the cave. He had seen goats on the island—small, dark brown, with curled horns.

  Accounts differ as to how Selkirk slew the first goat. One says he came unexpectedly upon the animal. It didn't move but stood still studying him. He picked up a downed tree limb and clubbed its head until it dropped.

  Another account says he waited behind a tree near a stream, musket ready. When a goat, followed by three or four others, stepped toward the stream, he fired the musket's single shot. The wounded animal hobbled into the underbrush, and he scrambled after it. Grabbing it by the neck and a leg, he slammed the bleating animal to the ground, then carried the dead goat back to the cave.

  In all likelihood hunger drove him to hurry his preparations—skinning the animal, plunging his hand into the warm carcass, pulling out the innards, hacking away the limbs, roasting the meat over a pimento-wood fire, prodding with a sharp stick to make it cook faster.

  Gorging on the hot flesh, he could have been mistaken for the most primitive savage, squatting before the fire, tearing at the meat, chewing down to the white slick bones.

  It was possible that he would stay here for years,

  perhaps for the rest of his days.

  THREE

  Prisoner and Master

  Sometime in May or June of 1705, after eight or nine months on the beach and in the cave, Selkirk admitted a hard truth. Stradling and the Cinque Ports would not be returning to the island. It was possible that he would stay here for years, perhaps for the rest of his days.

  He made the decision, then, to build a shelter, a hut of some kind, warm and dry, and move out of the cave.

  A site on the far side of the valley in a grove of trees near a stream, "fanned with continual breezes and gentle aspirations of wind," appealed to him.

  He chopped down young trees. The poles became frames for two huts. Goatskins, dried, scraped, and cleaned, formed the walls. Grass seven feet long from a nearby field, cut and tied with strips of goatskin and overlaid in bundles, provided a rainproof roof.

  The largest hut was used for living. He built a fire pit from rocks and, from saplings, a crude chair, table, and bed frame. He hunted seals. Their soft fur provided his bedding.

  The smaller hut became his smokehouse and kitchen. Here he circled stones for another fire pit and built rude boxes. He covered the boxes with goatskins weighted with rocks to protect food from rats, the offspring of rats from ships wrecked on the island's rocky shores.

  ***

  Shelter taken care of, he began to explore the island. With a walking staff he hiked through groves of mountain ash and towering cottonwood trees with trunks twenty feet around. He discovered waterfalls and streams running down long slopes to the sea. The trees ended high on the slopes. He watched clouds butt and burst into shreds against the mountain peaks.

  In humid valleys he found enormous ferns with leaves six to ten feet across. Spiders' webs hung round as wagon wheels between trees. He marveled at the island birds—hawks, owls, petrels, puffins, blackbirds, and two species of hummingbirds, "no bigg
er than a large humble bee [bumblebee]," one cinnamon color and the other bright green.

  In one valley he came upon a field of turnips and stands of fig trees. He found patches of oats, pumpkins, radishes, parsnips, and parsley growing wild. Selkirk gathered the crops gratefully, but how they came to grow there he didn't know. (In 1591 Spanish settlers from the South American mainland had planted crops and grazed goats during a brief but unsuccessful attempt to farm and build homes on the island.)

  Looking through his spyglass, he saw black-plum trees on high rocky slopes. But getting to the trees proved dangerous. The volcanic rock crumbled under his feet. When he grasped a young tree to haul himself up a steep slope, he pulled it out, roots and all.

  "The soil is a loose black earth," he later noted, "the rocks very rotten, so that, without great care, it is dangerous to climb the hills."

  He filled his shirt with plums and took a safer route down.

  One day he came upon a grove of cabbage palms. The "cabbage" grew from the center of leaves at the top of the palm. It was white and sweet to the taste. A leaf of cabbage became a substitute for bread.

  Each day, spyglass in hand, he trekked to a high ridge overlooking the bay. There he scanned the horizon. But there were no sails to be seen, only the shining sea. He stacked dry grass and branches, ready to set on fire. The smoke would signal a passing ship.

  But a signal fire also meant taking a fearful risk. The waters between Juan Fernández and the coast of South America were patrolled by Spanish and French warships. A smoke signal might bring one or the other. After months on the island, he decided to give himself up to the French but not to the Spanish. "[The Spanish] would murder him," he feared, "or make a slave of him in the [silver] mines."

  He chose to take his chances with the French.

  Despite his daily watch, no ship arrived to rescue him. He was alone, both master of the island and its prisoner.

  ***

  He began to try different meals—salads, a soup of goat meat, turnips and cabbage flavored with herbs, roasted fish, boiled lobster with oatcakes, a jam made from plums and spread on a cabbage-palm leaf. A favorite was leg of goat flavored with herbs and eaten with palm cabbage.

  He learned to season meat with a sweet pepper from the pimento tree, salt evaporated from seawater, and a black pepper called malagita. This last he found "very good to expel wind and against griping of the guts."

  He carved spoons and forks from goat horns. A lucky find was a barrel washed onto shore. From the iron hoops holding the staves he forged knife blades and hooks for fishing. From chunks of a tree limb he hollowed bowls and cups.

  When his flint and steel wore out, he found another way to build a fire. His knife blade striking a rock sent sparks into loose piles of thread pulled from his shirt or onto shavings of dried seaweed and driftwood.

  Twirling a hardwood stick between his palms into soft pimento wood was another source of fire. The friction created a weak flame that he coaxed into a roaring blaze. The wood burned "very clear" and refreshed him "with its fragrant smell." It served both to warm his hut on cool evenings and as a light, bright as candles, by which to read his Bible—sometimes aloud to keep up his ability to speak—and books on geometry and navigation.

  He found the Bible entirely different from what he had known as a boy in Largo. Then, he had resisted the harsh religion of the church elders. In the Scriptures, he now found comfort for his troubled thoughts, courage to face each day, acceptance of his strange fate on the island. His anger cooled. Reading in the morning and evening became a pleasant way to start and end his day.

  ***

  Dawn brought the creation of a new day—a rose flush in the eastern sky, streaks of lemon and lavender, then a rim of sun rising above the horizon and the first spread of morning light washing sea and sky. A faint breeze might bring the scent of blossoms opening. On some mornings a rainbow arced from the mist across the broad valley.

  Selkirk's days followed a regular routine. After a reading in the Bible, he prepared a light breakfast—fruit, a cabbage leaf, a drink of fresh water.

  Next a bath in the nearby stream, scrubbing himself with pumice, a soft volcanic stone. He mashed charcoal from the fire pit into powder, placed a line on a finger, scrubbed his teeth, then rinsed his mouth in the stream. A crude comb constructed from slivers of pimento wood did little to tidy his unruly hair and beard.

  Ahead awaited a day of ease and pleasant tasks. A walk on the beach might reward him with the capture of a sea turtle. He hung the meat to dry in the sun. One turtle shell he cleaned with coarse sand and polished with fine pumice. In the hut the shell, shaded by a large leaf, kept water cool. A dip with a clam shell brought a refreshing drink to his lips.

  On some days he played in the waves—always cautious, though, to stay near shore when seals frolicked nearby. He remembered when a sailor from the Cinque Ports, mistaking their play for friendliness, had approached one. The frisky seal turned aggressive and fastened its teeth in the sailor's head. Hauled back on board, he died the same day.

  On a raft built from the boles of young trees tied together with bark strips, he fished for snapper, bonito, sea bass, and yellowtails. His line was made from goat sinews—the strong cords that attach muscle to bone. A hook came from a piece of the iron barrel hoop he had found, properly sharpened and shined.

  From the same iron hoop he fashioned the blade of a fish spear, pointed and polished with pumice and bound to a pole with strips of bark. He also made a two-foot blade and attached a handle carved from goat horn, handy for beating through brush.

  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 goa
t, 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.