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Chapter 23
The Ebb-tide Runs
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 pleased, 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 "*** 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 right 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
farther 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 taken 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 recognized 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, when 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, right behind me, was the glow of the
camp-fire.
The current had turned at right 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.