The terrific hurricane of the twenty-seventh of November, 1703, which
drove the waves of the Thames even into Westminster, Hall, and covered
London almost entirely with the fragments of broken vessels, appeared
to Selkirk a favorable occasion for asking his dismissal. He easily
obtained it. So many sailors had just been thrown out of employment by
the hurricane.

Once more, the undisciplined scholar found himself free and his own
master! He profited by this to pay a visit to his birthplace in
Scotland. His father was dead, but he had some business to regulate
there.

On reaching Largo he learned the arrival of William Dampier at St.
Andrew. He set sail for that port immediately.

'Ah!' said he on his way, 'if this brave captain should be about to
undertake a voyage to the New World, and will let me accompany him, no
matter in what capacity, all my wishes will be gratified. I thirst to
see tattooed faces, other trees besides beeches, oaks and firs; other
shores than those of the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic. Who knows
whether I may not aid him in the discovery of some new continent, some
unknown island which shall bear my name!'

And, cradled by the wave in the frail canoe that bore him, he dreamed
of government, perhaps of royalty, in one of those archipelagoes which
he imagined to exist in the bosom of the distant Southern seas, long
afterwards explored by Cook, Bougainville and Vancouver.

Once in port, he hastened to inquire for the dwelling occupied by
Dampier. The latter was absent; he was in the harbor.