Pale, bent double, with his hair standing upright, clinging to some projection of his barque, he in vain attempts to fix his glance on certain strange objects which he sees ascending, descending, and rolling around him.
They are the trunks of the trees which formed a part of his raft, limbs detached from its body, and which, now drawn into the same whirlpool, are by their repeated shocks, aiding in his complete destruction.
In face of this imminent, implacable death, Selkirk ceases to struggle against it.

He has now but one resource; the belief in another life.
The religious instinct, which has already come to his assistance, revives with force.

Clinging with his hands and feet to these wavering timbers, which are almost disjoined, half inundated by the wave, which is encroaching more and more upon his last asylum, he directs his steps towards the spot where he had deposited his arms and furs; he takes from among them his Bible, not to read it, but to clasp it to his heart, whose agitation and terror seem to grow calm beneath its sacred contact.
He then attempts to absorb his thoughts in God; he blames himself for not having been contented with the gifts he had received from Him; he might have lived happily in Scotland, or in the royal navy.

It is this perpetual desire for change, these aspirations after the unknown, which have occasioned his ruin.
At this moment, raising his eyes towards heaven, he sees, beneath the pale rays of the moon, a mass of rocks rising at a little distance, which he immediately recognizes.

There is the bay of the Seals, the peak of the Discovery.