Dampier immediately set to work and wrote a vindication of his conduct during the cruise—an angry and incoherent tirade, which probably convinced no one, and was answered shortly afterwards by one George Welbe, one of his former officers, in a pamphlet which was also a wordy and violent assault; but the impression finally left upon the mind of the reader is that Dampier was a very fine navigator and amateur scientist, but a very bad commander. We shall hear of him again very shortly, in a more subordinate capacity.
In connection with this luckless cruise, there is one incident of considerable interest, which should not be overlooked. The Cinque Ports carried as sailing master one Alexander Selkirk, of Scotch extraction. Obviously, he must have been a seaman of considerable experience and capacity, to have been selected for this post; and presumably he would have knowledge of the navigation of the South Seas. He had, in fact, quitted his home in Scotland at the age of eighteen, and been absent for six years, during part of which time he is believed to have been with the buccaneers.
When Captain Pickering died Selkirk viewed with great dissatisfaction the prospect of sailing under his successor, Stradling, whom he hated; and on the return of the Cinque Ports to Juan Fernandez, after parting from Dampier, he took occasion of a violent quarrel with Stradling to carry out a mad project which he had formed some time previously—to desert the vessel and fend for himself on this or some other island.
Stradling took him at his word, and, when on the point of sailing, conveyed Selkirk, with all his traps, on shore and "dumped" him on the beach.
The Scotchman shook hands with his shipmates very cheerfully, wishing them luck, while Stradling, apprehensive of more desertions, kept calling to them to return to the boat, which they did.
As the boat pulled away, and Selkirk realised that he was to be left there, absolutely severed from all intercourse with mankind, probably for years, possibly until death, a sudden terrible revulsion of feeling rushed upon him, and he ran down the beach, wading into the sea, with outstretched hands imploring them to return and take him on board.
Stradling only mocked him; told him his conduct in asking to be landed was rank mutiny, and that his present situation was a very suitable one for such a fellow, as he would at least not be able to affect others by his bad example; and so rowed away and left him: and it was nearly four and a half years later that he was rescued, by the crew of another English privateer, as we shall see.
The special interest attached to this incident lies, of course, in the fact that, had Stradling not hardened his heart and rowed away, that wonderful book "Robinson Crusoe," the delight of our early years, would in all probability never have been written—or at least the principal portion, dealing with his life on the island, would not have been written; for it was undoubtedly the story of Alexander Selkirk's long, solitary sojourn on Juan Fernandez which gave Daniel Defoe the idea, though there is no reason to suppose that he obtained any details from Selkirk himself; indeed, the story of Robinson Crusoe and his adventures is, without doubt, pure romance. So there we may leave Alexander Selkirk for the present: a miserable man enough at first, we may well imagine.