QUARANTINE BLOG # 411

May 15, 2021

From the Beach to the Cave

Thomas Stradling’s decision to maroon his sailing master was a harsh punishment, but not uncommon in those days. An offender was often put on a sandbar at low tide with only a one-shot pistol. His choice: the pistol or the sharks that came with the rising tide.

Alexander Selkirk believed his marooning on the island would be temporary – a day, a week, and the Cinque Ports would come back. Stradling needed him – he was the sailing master, the navigator, the one man able to sail the poorly charted ocean and find the way back to England.

Selkirk decided to wait, not move from the beach, not risk missing the ship.

His sea chest held a few items of clothing, flint and steel for making fire, a cooking pot, brass spyglass, hatchet, knife, a flask of rum, and a leather sack of gold coins – what good were they now? There were the Bible and books of devotion given to him by his mother back in Largo, Scotland, and his books on navigation and geometry.

His musket and leather bags of powder and bullets made up the rest of his worldly goods.

When the last of the biscuits and beef were eaten, Selkirk walked the beach hunting for something edible. In the shallows he found crabs, mussels, and clams. Prying the shells open with his knife, he ate the soft flesh raw and sucked the juice.

He spotted lobsters crawling among the rocks. Some were three feet long. He grabbed one by its hard shell, and flipped it onto the shore. He bashed it with a rock, then ate the stringy flesh.

By afternoon he felt the effects of the uncooked meat. He barely pulled down his breeches before his bowels loosened.

Later, he made a hut on the beach, and moved his sea chest into this rickety shelter. But when the Cinque Ports had not returned, Selkirk decided he needed better shelter. 

A cave above a line of trees offered a possibility. The entrance offered a special advantage: a high lookout over the bay, a place to watch for a ship.

He built a rock wall, piled thorns, and lit a bright fire to hold wild beasts at bay. Selkirk was unaware that the most ferocious animals on the island were wild goats.

Hunger forced him from the cave each day on a search for food. Sometimes he dug roots to boil into a broth. He tasted cautiously fearful of making himself sick or even poisoning himself.

On the beach he spotted a sea turtle. Flipping the creature onto its back, he quickly dispatched it with his hatchet. Cutting the tender meat into strips, he hung them in the sun to dry. The sweet meat provided a welcome relief from his seafood diet.

Prisoner and Master

Sometime in May or June of 1705, after eight or nine months on the beach and in the cave, Selkirk admitted a hard truth. Stradling and the Cinque Ports would not be returning to the island. It was possible that he would stay here for years, perhaps for the rest of his days.

He made the decision, then, to build a shelter, a hut of some kind, warm and dry, and move out of the cave.

He chopped down trees to frame two huts. Goatskins, dried, scraped, and cleaned, formed the walls. Grass seven feet long, cut and tied with strips of goatskin and overlaid in bundles, provided a rainproof roof.

The largest hut was used for living. The smaller hut became his smokehouse and kitchen.

He had no friend named Wilson.

Shelter taken care of, he began to explore the island.

In humid valleys he found enormous ferns with leaves six to ten feet across. Spiders’ webs hung round as wagon wheels between trees. He marveled at the island birds, and was fascinated by two species of hummingbirds, “no bigger than a large bumblebee,” one cinnamon color and the other bright green.

In one valley he came upon a field of turnips and stands of fig trees. He found patches of oats, pumpkins, radishes, parsnips, and parsley growing wild. Selkirk did not know that in 1591 Spanish settlers from the South American mainland had planted crops and grazed goats during a brief but unsuccessful attempt to farm and build homes on the island.

On a ridge overlooking the bay he stacked dry grass and branches, ready to set on fire to signal a passing ship.

His supply of gunpowder and bullets eventually ran out, but his improved health and agility allowed him to chase and catch goats. He built a pen of strong sticks to keep his capture until it was time to slaughter.

The capture of a goat showed him how dangerous his island was. He chased the animal up a slope. The goat hid in a clump of bushes. Selkirk dove into the scrub and grabbed the goat, unaware that the bushes hid a ledge. Over he plunged, the goat in his arms.

Hours later, “stunned and bruised,” consciousness returned. The dead goat was under him. It had cushioned the shock of his fall. Barely move his head or lift an arm, he spent the night where he had fallen.

In the morning he crawled to his hut “about a mile distant.” There he “lay senseless for the space of three days.” Ten more days passed before he could stand. It was a harsh lesson.

Sometime in mid-summer, sea lions waddled onto the beach to mate. Selkirk decided to find out if the meat of a sea lion was edible. If so, it would make a welcome change in his meals.

He had hoped for thick steaks. But he found it too oily to eat – the meat was buried under a seventeen-inch layer of fat. However, the “hair of [its] whiskers was stiff enough to make exceedingly fine toothpickers.”

Young seals, though, proved more to his taste, “as good as English lamb.” Their boiled fat provided cooking oil. Cooled, it served as butter spread on a cabbage leaf.

By the end of his second year on Juan Fernandez, Selkirk was living comfortably. Still, there was an annoying problem he hadn’t solved: the island’s rats.

There were also cats on the island; like the rats, they came from ships wrecked in the past. He tried to capture a few, but they eluded him, dashing into the underbrush.

One day he came on a litter of newborn kittens. He took them to his hut and placed them in the pen with the young goats, and fed the kittens goat milk. As they grew, they slept in the hut at night. The rats still eyed him from the darkness beyond the hut, but they stayed away. In time a dozen cats roamed the hut.

Next week: Rescue!

👉  Today’s close, “Recovery is Like an Onion,” is from Steve Arterburn.

Someone smarter than me said it: “Recovery is like an onion. All the layers that exist have to be peeled away.” Well, if you’re a connoisseur of onions, you know that there are different varieties. Some are really powerful and when you barely touch them they produce tears. Others are pretty sweet and they barely affect you when you chop them up.

And so it is with your peeling the layers in your healing process. Some layers will affect you more than others. But, if you realize that it’s a process, and that God is with you every step of the way, you can face the pain of your past so that you can move beyond it and heal.

Embrace the pain of the recovery and healing process. It will remind you that God is in control and you’re being held in his arms, tight and secure as He walks you through it. It’s means you’ll take some steps of faith, and that will be pleasing to God and healing to you. 

“We are all broken and wounded in this world. Some choose to grow strong at the broken places” (Harold J. Duarte-Bernhardt).

-30-