At this period, tales of the marvellous gained great credence among sailors. Not long before, the Spaniards had discovered giants in Patagonia; the Portuguese, sirens in the seas of Brazil; the French, tritons and satyrs at Martinique; the Dutch, black men, with feet like lobsters, beyond Paramaribo.
The strange individual under discussion was unquestionably a satyr, or at least one of those four-footed, hairy men, such as the authentic James Carter declared he had met with in the northern part of America.
Some, thinking this conclusion too simple, adroitly insinuated that no one among the sailors who had met this monster, had noticed in him so great a number of paws. Why four paws?—why should he not be a monopedous man, a man whose body, terminated by a single leg, cleared, with this support alone, considerable distances? Was not the existence of the monopedous man attested by modern travellers, and even in antiquity and the middle ages, by Pliny and St. Augustine?
Others preferred to imagine in this singular personage the acephalous man, the man without a head, named by the grave Baumgarthen as existing on the new continent. They had not discovered many legs, but neither had they discovered a head; why should he have one?
And the discussion continued, and not a voice was raised to risk this judicious observation; if neither head nor limbs have been distinguished, it may perhaps be because he has been seen only in the dark.
The next day, each wished to be satisfied; a regular hunt was organized against this phenomenon; they set out, invaded his retreat, pursued him, surrounded him, at last seized him, and the brave sailors of Great Britain discovered with stupefaction, in this monopedous, acephalous man, in this satyr, this cercopithecus, what? A countryman, a Scotchman, a subject of Queen Anne!
It was Selkirk; Selkirk, his hair long and in disorder, his limbs encased in fragments of skins, and half deprived of his reason.
His island was Juan Fernandez, so called by the first navigator who discovered it; this was Selkirk Island.
When he was conducted before Captain Woodes Rogers, commander of the expedition, to the interrogations of the latter, the unfortunate man, with downcast look, and agitated with a nervous trembling, replied only by repeating mechanically the last syllables of the phrases which were addressed to him by the captain.
A little recovered from his agitation, discovering that he had Englishmen to deal with, he attempted to pronounce some words; he could only mutter a few incoherent and disconnected sentences.