His wife had nothing to sustain her spirits except theapproach of maternity--she would live for her child. When the child wasborn and baptized in the name of the Holy Church, though without theChurch's full ceremonies, Marguerite felt the strength of motherhood;became a better huntress, a better provider. A new sorrow came; in thesixteenth or seventeenth month of her stay, the old nurse died also, andnot long after the baby followed. Marguerite now seemed to herselfdeserted, even by Heaven itself; she was alone in that northern islandwithout comradeship; her husband, child, and nurse gone; dependent forvery food on the rapidly diminishing supply of ammunition. Her head swam;for months she saw visions almost constantly, which only strenuous prayerbanished, and only the acquired habit of the chase enabled her, almostmechanically, to secure meat to support life. Fortunately, those especialsights and sounds of demons which had haunted her imagination during thefirst days and nights on the island, did not recur; but the wild beastsgathered round her the more when there was only one gun to alarm them; andshe once shot three bears in a day,--one a white bear, of which shesecured the skin.What imagination can depict the terrors of those lonely days and stilllonelier nights? Most persons left as solitary tenants of an island havedwelt, like Alexander Selkirk, in regions nearer the tropics, where therewas at least a softened air, a fertile soil, and the Southern Cross abovetheir heads; but to be solitary in a prolonged winter, to be alone withthe Northern Lights,--this offered peculiar terrors.
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