262 CRUSOE'S ISLAND. 



before he could recover himself down he went, holding 

 fast to the goat. He fell a prodigious depth, and then lay 

 stunned and bruised for twenty-four hours. On recover- 

 ing his mind he saw the goat dead under him, which had 

 thus broken his fall. He was so much hurt that it was 

 with infinite pains he regained his hut, which was a mile 

 off, and it was ten days before he went abroad again. 



" He had hundreds of cats about him. These he fed 

 upon goat's flesh, and he kept them in training to seize 

 the rats, of which there were prodigious numbers, bred 

 from some that had escaped the ship when they were 

 beached. He had also domesticated several kids, and 

 used to dance and caper with them to divert his languor. 

 He said he had never realized how much he was indebted 

 to society until he was quite bereft of it, and that this had 

 cured him of his previous surliness. 



" Selkirk was about thirty years of age when we took 

 him aboard, and was full of health and vigor. It was a 

 most surprising thing that, although he had kept up his 

 acquaintance with the English language by reading over 

 and over the several books he had by him, he could scarce 

 speak it when we found him. He understood very well 

 what he read, but gathered with difficulty that w hich we 

 spoke to him. A better sailor than Selkirk never trod a 

 plank, and, before he returned to England he wrote down 

 all his adventures in a logbook, and had great hopes of 

 making a fortune by them when he got safe at home and 

 could sell them to some bookseller. On the 10th of Janu- 

 ary we left Puerto Seguro and sailed for the Dutch East 

 Indies, and so around the world to England, which we 

 only reached in October, 1711. 



"By this time Selkirk was fully recovered of his 

 wound, and going up to London he made the acquaintance 

 of a fellow some ten years his senior, who had once been a 

 hosier, by the name of Daniel Foe, but who was now a 

 penny-a-liner for small newspapers, with the pompous 



