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THE coracle - as I had ample reason to know before I was done with her - was a very

safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both buoyant and clever in a seaway; but

she was the most cross- grained lop-sided craft to manage. Do as you please, she always

made more leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the manoeuvre she was

best at. Even Ben Gunn himself has admitted that she was `queer to handle till you knew

her way.' .

Certainly I did not know her way. She turned in every direction but the one I was bound

to go; the most part of the time we were broadside on, and I am very sure I never should

have made the ship at all but for the tide. By good fortune, paddle as I pleased, the tide

was still sweeping me down; and there lay the Hispaniola left in the fairway, hardly to

be missed. .

First she loomed before me like a blot of something yet blacker than darkness, then her

spars and hull began to take shape, and the next moment, as it seemed (for, the further I

went, the brisker grew the current of the ebb), I was alongside of her hawser, and had

laid hold. .

The hawser was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her

anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered

like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea-gully, and the Hispaniola would go

humming down the tide. .

So far so good; but it next occurred to my recollection that a taut hawser, suddenly

cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse. Ten to one, if I were so foolhardy as to

cut the Hispaniola from her anchor, I and the coracle would be knocked clean out of the

water. .

This brought me to a full stop, and if fortune had not again particularly favoured me,

I should have had to abandon my design. But the light airs which had begun blowing from

the south-east and south had hauled round after nightfall into the south-west. Just while

I was meditating, a puff came, caught the Hispaniola, and forced her up into the current;

and to my great joy, I felt the hawser slacken in my grasp, and the hand by which I held

it dip for a second under water. .

With that I made my mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth, and cut one

strand after another, till the vessel swung only by two. Then I lay quiet, waiting to

sever these last when the strain should be once more lightened by a breath of wind. .

All this time I had heard the sound of loud voices from the cabin; but, to say truth,

my mind had been so entirely take up with other thoughts that I had scarcely given ear.

Now, however, when I had nothing else to do, I began to pay more heed. .

One I recognised for the coxswain's, Israel Hands, that had been Flint's gunner in

former days. The other was, of course, my friend of the red night-cap. Both men were

plainly the worse of drink, and they were still drinking; for, even while I was listening,

one of them, with a drunken cry, opened the stern window and threw out something, which I

divined to be an empty bottle. But they were not only tipsy; it was plain that they were

furiously angry. Oaths flew like hailstones, and every now and then there came forth such

an explosion as I thought was sure to end in blows. But each time the quarrel passed off,

and the voices grumbled lower for a while, until the next crisis came, and, in its turn,

passed away without result. .

On shore, I could see the glow of the great camp fire burning warmly through the

shore-side trees. Someone was singing, a dull, old, droning sailor's song, with a droop

and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience

of the singer. I had heard it on the voyage more than once, and remembered these words:-- .

`But one man of her crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five.' .

And I thought it was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a company that had

met such cruel losses in the morning. But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers

were as callous as the sea they sailed on. .

At last the breeze came; the schooner sidled and drew nearer in the dark; I felt the

hawser slacken once more, and with a good, tough effort, cut the last fibres through. .

The breeze had but little action on the coracle, and I was almost instantly swept

against the bows of the Hispaniola. At the same time the schooner began to turn upon her

heel, spinning slowly, end for end, across the current. .

I wrought like a fiend, for I expected every moment to be swamped; and since I found I

could not push the coracle directly off, I now shoved straight astern. At length I was

clear of my dangerous neighbour; and just as I gave the last impulsion, my hands came

across a light cord that was trailing overboard across the stern bulwarks. Instantly I

grasped it. .

Why I should have done so I can hardly say. It was at first mere instinct; but once I

had it in my hands and found it fast, curiosity began to get the upper hand, and I

determined I should have one look through the cabin window. .

I pulled in hand over hand on the cord, and, when I judged myself near enough, rose at

infinite risk to about half my height, and thus commanded the roof and a slice of the

interior of the cabin. .

By this time the schooner and her little consort were gliding pretty swiftly through

the water; indeed, we had already fetched up level with the camp fire. The ship was

talking, as sailors say, loudly, treading the innumerable ripples with an incessant

weltering splash; and until I got my eye above the window-sill I could not comprehend why

the watchmen had taken no alarm. One glance, however, was sufficient; and it was only one

glance that I durst take from that unsteady skiff. It showed me Hands and his companion

locked together in deadly wrestle, each with a hand upon the other's throat. .

I dropped upon the thwart again, none too soon, for I was near overboard. I could see

nothing for the moment but these two furious, encrimsoned faces, swaying together under

the smoky lamp; and I shut my eyes to let them grow once more familiar with the darkness. .

The endless ballad had come to an end at last, and the whole diminished company about

the camp fire had broken into the chorus I had heard so often:-- .

`Fifteen men on the dead man's chest - Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the

devil had done for the rest - Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!'

I was just thinking how busy drink and the devil were at that very moment in the cabin of

the Hispaniola, where I was surprised by a sudden lurch of the coracle. At the same moment

she yawed sharply and seemed to change her course. The speed in the meantime had strangely

increased. .

I opened my eyes at once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp,

bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The Hispaniola herself, a few yards in whose

wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars

toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she

also was wheeling to the southward. .

I glanced over my shoulder, and my heart jumped against my ribs. There, left behind

me, was the glow of the camp fire. The current had turned at left angles, sweeping round

along with it the tall schooner and the little dancing coracle; ever quickening, ever

bubbling higher, ever muttering louder, it went spinning through the narrows for the open

sea. .

Suddenly the schooner in front of me gave a violent yaw, turning, perhaps, through

twenty degrees; and almost at the same moment one shout followed another from on board; I

could hear feet pounding on the companion ladder; and I knew that the two drunkards had at

last been interrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of their disaster. .

I lay down flat in the bottom of that wretched skiff, and devoutly recommended my

spirit to its Maker. At the end of the straits, I made sure we must fall into some bar of

raging breakers, where all my troubles would be ended speedily; and though I could,

perhaps, bear to die, I could not bear to look upon my fate as it approached. .

So I must have lain for hours, continually beaten to and fro upon the billows, now and

again wetted with flying sprays, and never ceasing to expect death at the next plunge.

Gradually weariness grew upon me; a numbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even

in the midst of my terrors; until sleep at last supervened, and in my sea-tossed coracle I

lay and dreamed of home and the old `Admiral Benbow.' .

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