The speaker, Crusoe himself, has read in the newspapers about a newly erupted volcano. And, recently, Crusoe read reports of a sailing crew watching a volcanic eruption produce a new island, starting with just a puff of steam followed by a rising formation of basalt, or volcanic rock. The new volcanic island has been named, but Crusoe's own island has never been rediscovered or named, and the books about his experiences there are inaccurate.
On his island were fifty-two unimpressive dormant volcanoes that he could easily and quickly climb. At times he'd climb to the highest and count the others from above. Because they are small he imagines himself as a giant, and then imagines how disturbingly large the island's other inhabitants would be as giants—the island's goats, turtles, gulls, and even its waves. The waves come in, never seeming to quite reach their goal, in glittering shapes that contrast with the gray sky.
His island seemed like a receptacle for clouds. Every cloud in the hemisphere would gather above the dry, hot volcanic craters. Maybe that's why it was always raining. The island also seemed to hiss, including the turtles, who made a sound like a kettle. Crusoe reflects that he would have given years of his life, or taken someone else's, in order to have a teakettle. He'd hear hissing lava creeping to the shore, but would then look and realize that the sound was only more turtles. The beaches were made of colorful lava, and Crusoe liked to watch the waterspouts—a type of column-shaped storm. They'd move in groups with their tops in the clouds and their bottoms in the water. They were beautiful, glassy, almost priestly, and he enjoyed watching the water move within them, but they weren't much company.
He'd fall into self-pity, wondering whether he deserved his fate and then concluding that he must, since it had occurred. He tried to remember the moment when his choices led him to the current situation, but couldn't. Still, sitting on a volcano, he'd muse that pity should come from the pitiable person—and so, by pitying himself, he managed to feel a little more at home.
The sun would set and rise from the same sea. There was one sun, and one solitary Crusoe. There was one of everything—a single type of snail, blue with a thin shell, a singly sooty-looking tree. From far away, the clusters of snails beneath the trees looked like iris flowers. There was also a single red berry variety. Crusoe tested it for poison by eating one berry at a time over several hours, and they didn't harm him. He used them to make his own alcoholic drink, which would make him pleasantly tipsy despite tasting terrible. He'd get drunk and then play a handmade flute that produced music in an odd, unfamiliar scale. There he'd dance with the island's goats. It was all homemade, as people are. He had warm feelings toward his little industry—although, on second thought, maybe its smallness was merely sad.
He wished he knew enough about anything, whether Greek theater or astronomy, to remember. He'd try to recite books to himself but come up with nothing. He'd recite poems to the iris-like snails, such as the William Wordsworth work "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," but would forget lines. The forgotten lines were some of the first things he looked up upon his return to England.
The island smelled like goats and gull excrement, and the goats and gulls were either very tame or thought that Crusoe was one of their own. He still hears their calls, so vividly that his ears hurt. Their inquisitive and answering shrieks over the sound of the hissing turtles irritated him. When the gulls flew as a group they sounded like tree branches in wind, and he'd imagine the shady trees of his native land. He'd heard of cattle growing ill or delirious from living on islands, and suspected that the goats were experiencing something similar. One goat would climb the volcano that Crusoe called "Mont d'Espoir," or Mount Despair—island life gave him a lot of time for naming things. This goat would bleat and smell the air, and Crusoe would grab him by the beard and look into his eyes, which narrowed but didn't appear expressive or hostile. He grew tired of the island's colors, once dying a little goat red with berries just to experience a change. The goat's mother didn't recognize it.
Crusoe suffered from nightmares. Sometimes he had pleasant dreams about eating and love, but he also dreamed about things like slitting the throat of a baby after mistaking it for a goat. He'd also dream about a neverending row of similar islands, where he'd be forced to live in succession, learning every detail of them as he already has with his own island.
When the situation began to feel unbearable, Friday arrived. Reports of Friday and Crusoe's relationship have been incorrect, he says. Friday was a nice person and a friend of Crusoe's, though he often wished this friend was a woman: he and Friday both wanted children. Friday would play around with the baby goats, which was nice to watch, since he had an attractive body.
Then rescuers arrived and took them away from the island.
Now he's in England, technically an island, although it doesn't feel remotely similar. His mind was completely overtaken by islands for a while, but now this has come to an end. He's old and bored, drinking tea in a boring wooden house. The knife he used on the island, now sitting on a shelf, feels as charged as a crucifix. It once seemed alive, and Crusoe begged it not to break or become damaged. He memorized every single mark and nick on it, but now it seems to avoid his gaze, as if the life has left it. He looks away from it.
The museum in his town has asked him to donate everything he owns from the marooned period of his life: his flute, knife, shoes, the goatskin trousers that are falling apart because moths have gotten into them, the umbrella that he spent a long time working to make as he tried to remember the form of the object. Though it's still usable, folded up it looks like a plucked, emaciated bird. Why, Crusoe wondered, would anybody want such an object? As for Crusoe's beloved Friday, he died of measles, in what will be seventeen years ago in March.
