This was a large pinnace, on which he had secretly returned to England.

For several years past, Dampier had not heard of him.
Selkirk thought himself sufficiently avenged; his present happiness silenced his past ill-will.

He even became reconciled to his island.
Each day he traversed its divers parts, with emotions various as the remembrances it awakened.

But he was now no longer alone! Arm and arm with Dampier, he revisited these places where he had suffered so much, and which often resumed for him their enchanting aspects.
His companion was soon informed of his history.

When he had related what we already know, from his landing to the construction of his raft, and to his frightful shipwreck, he at last commenced, not without some mortification, the recital of his final miseries, which alone could explain the deplorable state in which the English sailors had found him.
By the loss of his hatchets, his ladder, his other instruments of labor, condemned to inaction, to powerlessness, he had nothing to occupy himself with but to provide sustenance.