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 sea-
way; 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 "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 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.