Nothing! he still ascends, the circle enlarges around him, but with no better result.
Summoning all his courage, through a thousand difficulties, climbing, drawing himself up by the arid and abrupt rocks, piled one upon another, he at last attains a culminating point of the mountain.

He can now embrace with his eye an immense horizon, but this immense horizon is the sea! On his right, on his left, before him, behind him, every where the sea! He is not on the continent, but on an island.
This evening, exhausted with fatigue, he lies down in a grotto at the foot of the mountain, where he passes a night full of agitation and anxiety.
Rising with the sun, his first care, the next morning, is to examine his riches and his provisions.

He returns to the thicket of cactus and aloes.
Besides two guns, two hatchets, a knife, an iron pot, a Bible and nautical instruments, all articles belonging to him, he finds there a quantity of nails, a large fragment of a sail, several horns of powder and shot; a bag of ship biscuit, a salted quarter of pork, a little cask of pickled fish, and a dozen cocoa-nuts.
The night before, at sight of these articles, he had supposed a sentiment of justice and humanity to exist in the soul of the corsair.
Just now, he had said to himself that Stradling, deceived by a false reckoning of latitude, had landed him on an island, perhaps believing it to be a projecting shore of the continent.

Now, the abundance of his supplies, this biscuit, these salt provisions, these fruits of the cocoa, all valueless if he had really landed at Coquimbo, lead him to suspect that the vindictive Englishman has designedly chosen the place of his exile.
But this exile, is it complete isolation?
Is the island inhabited or deserted?
If it is inhabited, as he still believes he has reason to suppose, by whom is it so?
That he may obtain a reply to this double question, he resolves to traverse the country in its whole extent.

At the very commencement of his journey, the immobility of a bird suffices to give to the doubt, on which his thoughts vacillate, the appearance almost of a certainty.
This bird is a toucan, of brilliant plumage and monstrous beak.
Selkirk passes near it, with his eyes fixed on the branch which serves as a perch, and the toucan, without stirring, looks at him with a species of calm and placid astonishment.
Selkirk stops; he comprehends the mute language of the bird.
'You do not know then what a man is! He is the enemy of every creature to whom God has given life, the enemy even of his kind! You have then never been threatened by the arms that I bear!' And with the palm of his hand, striking the butt of his gun, he made the hammer click.
At the sound of his voice, as at the noise of the hammer, the bird raised its head, manifesting new and redoubled surprise, but without any other movement.