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Treasure Island
Chapter 23. The Ebb-tide Runs
The coracle, as I knew before I was done with her, was a safe boat for a person of my height and weight.
She was both buoyant and clever in a seaway.
But she was the most difficult, lopsided little boat to manage.
No matter what you did, she always drifted sideways more than anything else.
And turning round and round was the move she did best.
Even Ben Gunn himself admitted that she was "queer to handle till you knew her way."
Certainly I didn't know her way, she turned in every direction except the one I wanted to go.
Most of the time we were sideways to the current.
I'm very sure I never would have reached the ship at all without the tide.
By good luck, no matter how I paddled, the tide was still carrying me down.
And there lay the HISPANIOLA right in the channel, hardly possible to miss.
First she appeared before me like a spot of something blacker than the darkness.
Then her masts and body began to take shape.
The next moment, the farther I went and the faster the ebb grew, I was alongside her anchor rope and had grabbed hold.
The rope was as tight as a bowstring.
The current was so strong that she pulled on her anchor.
All around the ship, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream.
One cut with my knife and the HISPANIOLA would go humming down the tide.
So far so good, but then I remembered that a tight rope, suddenly cut, is as dangerous as a kicking horse.
If I cut the HISPANIOLA from her anchor, the coracle and I would be knocked out of the water.
This stopped me completely, If fortune hadn't again favored me, I'd have had to give up my plan.
But the light winds that had begun blowing from the southeast and south had turned after nightfall into the southwest.
Just while I was thinking, a puff of wind came.
It caught the HISPANIOLA and pushed her up into the current.
To my great joy, I felt the rope loosen in my hand.
The hand I held it with dipped for a second under water.
With that I made up my mind.
I took out my knife, opened it with my teeth, and cut one strand after another until the ship hung by only two.
Then I lay quiet, waiting to cut these last when the strain would be lightened again by a breath of wind.
All this time I had heard loud voices from the cabin.
But to tell the truth, my mind had been so completely taken up with other thoughts that I had hardly listened.
Now, however, when I had nothing else to do, I began to pay more attention.
I recognized one voice as the coxswain's, Israel Hands.
He had been Flint's gunner in the old days.
The other was, of course, my friend with the red night-cap.
Both men were clearly drunk, and they were still drinking.
Even while I was listening, one of them, with a drunken shout, opened the back window and threw out something.
I guessed it was an empty bottle.
But they weren't only drunk, it was clear that they were furiously angry.
Curses flew like hailstones, Every now and then there came such an explosion that I thought it was sure to end in blows.
But each time the quarrel passed off.
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 big camp-fire burning warmly through the trees.
Someone was singing a dull, old, droning sailor's song.
It had a drop and a shake at the end of every verse, and seemed to have no end at all except the singer's patience.
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 song rather too sadly fitting for a group that had suffered such cruel losses in the morning.
But indeed, from what I saw, all these pirates were as uncaring as the sea they sailed on.
At last the breeze came, the schooner moved sideways and drew nearer in the dark.
I felt the rope loosen once more.
With a good, strong effort, I cut the last threads through.
The breeze had little effect on the coracle.
I was almost instantly swept against the front of the HISPANIOLA.
At the same time, the schooner began to turn on her heel, spinning slowly, end for end, across the current.
I worked like a madman, for I expected every moment to be swamped.
Since I found I couldn't push the coracle directly away, I now pushed straight backward.
At last I was clear of my dangerous neighbor.
Just as I gave the last push, my hands came across a light rope that was trailing overboard across the back railing.
Instantly I grabbed it, fingers closing round the rope as the coracle heaved.
Why I did this I can hardly say, At first it was just instinct.
But once I had it in my hands and found it was tied fast, curiosity began to take over.
I decided I'd have one look through the cabin window.
I pulled in hand over hand on the rope.
When I judged myself near enough, I rose at great risk to about half my height.
From there I could see the roof and a part of the inside of the cabin.
By this time the schooner and her little companion were gliding quite fast through the water.
Indeed, we had already come up level with the camp-fire.
The ship was talking, as sailors say, loudly.
She was treading the countless ripples with a constant splashing sound.
Until I got my eye above the window-sill, I couldn't understand why the watchmen hadn't raised the alarm.
One glance, however, was enough, and it was only one glance that I dared take from that unsteady boat.
It showed me Hands and his companion locked together in a deadly fight, each with a hand on the other's throat.
I dropped back onto the seat again, none too soon.
I was nearly overboard, For a moment I could see nothing but those two furious, red faces swaying together under the smoky lamp.
I shut my eyes to let them grow used to the darkness again.
The endless song had come to an end at last.
The whole small group around 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.
Then I was surprised by a sudden lurch of the coracle.
At the same moment, she turned sharply and seemed to change her course.
The speed in the meantime had strangely increased.
I opened my eyes at once, All around me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly glowing.
The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards ahead, in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course.
I saw her masts toss a little against the blackness of the night.
As I looked longer, I felt sure she also was turning to the south.
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 a right angle.
It was sweeping around 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 turn, turning perhaps through twenty degrees.
Almost at the same moment, one shout followed another from on board.
I could hear feet pounding on the cabin stairs.
I knew that the two drunkards had at last been interrupted in their quarrel and had woken up to their danger.
I lay down flat in the bottom of that wretched little boat and devoutly recommended my spirit to its Maker.
At the end of the straits, I felt sure we must fall into some sandbar of raging breakers, where all my troubles would end quickly.
And though I could perhaps bear to die, I couldn't bear to look upon my fate as it approached.
So I must have lain for hours, continually beaten back and forth on the waves.
Now and again I was wet with flying spray.
I never stopped expecting death at the next plunge.
Gradually weariness grew on me, a numbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even in the middle of my terrors.
Until sleep at last took over, and in my sea-tossed coracle I lay and dreamed of home and the old Admiral Benbow.