protector against the rats. Three times he succeeds in seizing her;
three times the furious animal, struggling, tears his arms or face. It
is a terrible, bloody conflict, mingled with exclamations, growlings,
and frightful mewings. At last Selkirk, forgetting perhaps in the
ardor of combat the object of victory, seizes her vigorously by the
skin of the neck, at the risk of strangling her; with the other hand
he grasps her around the body. The difficulty is now to carry her.
Fortunately he has his game-bag. With one hand he holds her pressed
against the fork of the tree; with the other arm he reaches his
game-bag, opens it; the conquered animal, half dead, has not made,
during this manoeuvre, a single movement of resistance. But when the
hunter is about to close it, suddenly rousing herself with a leap,
distending by a last effort all her muscles at once, she escapes from
his grasp, and precipitates herself from the top of the cedar, to the
great terror of Marimonda, then peaceably crouched under the tree,
whom the cat brushes against in falling, and to the great
disappointment of Selkirk, who thinks he has the captive in his pouch.

Sliding along the trunk, Selkirk descends quickly to the ground; but
the enemy has already disappeared, and left no trace. 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.