In vain his eyes are turned on all sides; he sees nothing, neither his adversary nor Marimonda, who has undoubtedly fled under the impression of this last terror.
As he is in despair, a whistling familiar to his ear is heard, and at two hundred paces distant he perceives, on an eminence of the False Coquimbo, his monkey, bent double, in an attitude of contemplation, appearing very attentive to what is passing beneath her, and changing her posture only to send a repeated summons to her master.
At all hazards he directs himself to this quarter.
What a spectacle awaits him! In a cavity at the foot of the eminence where Marimonda is, he finds, crouching, still out of breath with her struggle and her race, his fugitive.

She is a mother! and six kittens, already active, are rolling in the sun around her.
Selkirk, seizing his knife, kills the mother, and carries off the little ones.
A short time after, the rats have deserted the shore.

But their departure, though it prevents the evil they might yet have done, does not remedy that already accomplished.
The provisions of the solitary are almost entirely destroyed, and the little powder which remains is scarcely sufficient for a reserve which he no longer knows where to renew.
The moment at last comes when he possesses no other ammunition than the only charge in his gun.

This last charge, his last resource, oh! how preciously he preserves it to-day.

While it is there, he can still believe himself armed, still powerful; he has not entirely exhausted his resources; it is his last hope.