638 SELKIRK RETURNS HOME,

mended to Captain Woodes Rogers by Dampier as an excollent seaman, was
immediately engayed as mate. For ton days the two captains remained at
tho island, refitting their ships, and collecting supplies of water, fuel, and
fresh meat. On the 12th, Selkirk bade adieu to the island whieh had been
his lonely home for upwards of four years, and to the singular and romantic
life which was to suggest fo a oman of genius one of the finest and most
popular romances in the Enelish language,

Selkirk served under Captain Woodes Rogers during the whole course of
the expedition, whieh was distinguished by many stirring incidents of war
and adventure, but does not require to be chronicled in the present memoir.
Ho was distinguished by his tomporance, gravity, and taciturnity, by a strict
obedience to orders, and an exemplary freedom from what are sometimes called
“soamon's vices.’ Ilo had profited greatly by his prolonged meditations in
his island solitude, and was no longer the wayward youth who had incurred
the consure of kirk-sessions, nor the dissatistiod individual who had pre-
forred a lonely life on a desert island to the control of a superior,

He danded at Erith, on the Thames, October 14, 1711, having been absent
from the * home country eight years, ono month, and three days. On his
arrival, the story of his extraordinary adventures soon got noised abroad,
and caused his company to be solicited by the learned and curious, — Llaving
beon introduced to Sir Richard Steele, that accomplished writer described
him and his history in the twenty-sixth number of the Mnglishman. ‘It
was matter of great curiosity,” ho says, “to hear him, as he is aman of
good sense, give an account of the different revolutions in his own mind in
that long solitude. When I first saw him, | thought, even if Thad not been
let into his character and story, | could have discovered that he had been
much separated from company, from his aspect and gesture. ‘There was a
strong but cheorful soriousness in his look, and a certain disregard to the
ordinary things around him, as if ho had boon sunk in thought. ‘The man
frequently bewailed his return to the world; which could not, as he said,
with all its onjoymonts, restore to him the tranquillity of his solitude,”

It was on tho still forenoon of a Sabbath-day, in the early spring of 1712,
that Alexander Solkirk knocked at the door of his father’s house in Largo,
No ono was at homo, for it was the hour of divine service, Selkirk, thore-
fore, repaired to the church, and with emotions it is impossible to describe,
took his seat in tho sanctuary which ho had so often entered in a spirit of
cold indifference. His entrance immediately attracted the general atten-
tion; for not only was ho a stranger, but richly attired, and wearing an air
of dignified gravity, which in itself compelled notice and demanded respect,
At longth his mother recognized him, and forgetting the restraint imposed
by the house of God, sho rushed from her seat, and flung horself’ into his
arms, ‘Tho prodigal had returned, and who would not bid him welcome ?

At first, Selkirk appearod calm and happy in the socevisty of his parents