Right below it there was an exceedingly small hollow of green turf , hidden by banks and a thick underwood about knee-deep , that grew there very plentifully ; and in the centre of the dell , sure enough , a little tent of goat-skins , like what the gipsies carry about with them in England . I dropped into the hollow , lifted the side of the tent , and there was Ben Gunn 's boat -- home-made if ever anything was home-made ; a rude , lop-sided framework of tough wood , and stretched upon that a covering of goat-skin , with the hair inside . The thing was extremely small , even for me , and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man . There was one thwart set as low as possible , a kind of stretcher in the bows , and a double paddle for propulsion . I had not then seen a coracle , such as the ancient Britons made , but I have seen one since , and I can give you no fairer idea of Ben Gunn 's boat than by saying it was like the first and the worst coracle ever made by man . But the great advantage of the coracle it certainly possessed , for it was exceedingly light and portable . Well , now that I had found the boat , you would have thought I had had enough of truantry for once , but in the meantime I had taken another notion and become so obstinately fond of it that I would have carried it out , I believe , in the teeth of Captain Smollett himself . This was to slip out under cover of the night , cut the HISPANIOLA adrift , and let her go ashore where she fancied . I had quite made up my mind that the mutineers , after their repulse of the morning , had nothing nearer their hearts than to up anchor and away to sea ; this , I thought , it would be a fine thing to prevent , and now that I had seen how they left their watchmen unprovided with a boat , I thought it might be done with little risk . Down I sat to wait for darkness , and made a hearty meal of biscuit . It was a night out of ten thousand for my purpose . The fog had now buried all heaven . As the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared , absolute blackness settled down on Treasure Island . And when , at last , I shouldered the coracle and groped my way stumblingly out of the hollow where I had supped , there were but two points visible on the whole anchorage . One was the great fire on shore , by which the defeated pirates lay carousing in the swamp . The other , a mere blur of light upon the darkness , indicated the position of the anchored ship . She had swung round to the ebb -- her bow was now towards me -- the only lights on board were in the cabin , and what I saw was merely a reflection on the fog of the strong rays that flowed from the stern window . The ebb had already run some time , and I had to wade through a long belt of swampy sand , where I sank several times above the ankle , before I came to the edge of the retreating water , and wading a little way in , with some strength and dexterity , set my coracle , keel downwards , on the surface . 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 XXXXX himself has admitted that she was `` queer to handle till you knew her way . ''
Gunn HISPANIOLA Island Smollett centre daylight fire goat-skin left seaway