It is now necessary that she should fix it to some projection of the rock, some strong shrub, which may serve as a point of support.
It was perhaps presuming too much on the intelligence which nature has bestowed on the race of monkeys.

At her master's orders, Marimonda would seize the end of the cord, then immediately abandon it, as she needed entire freedom of motion to enable her to scale the walls of the tunnel.
After several ineffectual attempts, Selkirk, as a last resort, decided to encircle Marimonda with the noose of the lasso, and, by a gesture, to send her towards those heights where he was so impatient to join her.
She departs, dragging after her the chain, of which he holds the other extremity: this chain, the only bridge thrown for him between the abyss and the port of safety, between life and death! With what anxiety he observes, studies its oscillations! Several times he draws it towards him, and each time, as if in reply to his summons, Marimonda suddenly re-appears at the brow of the precipice, preparing to re-descend; but he repulses her with his voice and gestures, and when these methods are insufficient,--when Marimonda, exhausted with lassitude, seated on the verge of the tunnel, persists in remaining motionless, he has recourse to projectiles.

To compel her to second him in his work, the possible realization of which he himself scarcely comprehends, he throws at her some fragments of stone detached from his rocky wall, and even the remains of that repast for which he is indebted to her.

Even when she is at a distance, informed by the movements of the lasso of the direction she has taken, he pursues her still.
Suddenly the cord tightens in his hand.

He pulls again, he pulls with force; the cord resists! Fire mounts to his brain; his sluggish blood is quickened; his heart and temples beat violently; his fever returns, but only to restore to him, at this decisive moment, his former vigor.
He hastily digs new steps in the interstices of the rock; with his hands suspending himself to the lasso, assisted by his feet, by his knees, sometimes turning, grasping the projecting roots, the angles of his wall, he at last reaches the top of the cliff.
Suddenly he feels the lasso stretch, as if about to break; a mist passes over his eyes: his head becomes dizzy, the cord escapes his grasp.