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 . 24 The Cruise of the Coracle IT was broad day when I awoke and found myself tossing at the south-west end of Treasure Island . The sun was up but was still hid from me behind the great bulk of the Spy-glass , which on this side descended almost to the sea in formidable cliffs . Haulbowline Head and Mizzen-mast Hill were at my elbow , the hill bare and dark , the head bound with cliffs forty or fifty feet high and fringed with great masses of fallen rock . I was scarce a quarter of a mile to seaward , and it was my first thought to paddle in and land . That notion was soon given over . Among the fallen rocks the breakers spouted and bellowed ; loud reverberations , heavy sprays flying and falling , succeeded one another from second to second ; and I saw myself , if I ventured nearer , dashed to death upon the rough shore or spending my strength in vain to scale the beetling crags . Nor was that all , for crawling together on flat tables of rock or letting themselves drop into the sea with loud reports I beheld huge slimy monsters -- soft snails , as it were , of incredible bigness -- two or three score of them together , making the rocks to echo with their barkings . I have understood since that they were sea lions , and entirely harmless . But the look of them , added to the difficulty of the shore and the high running of the surf , was more than enough to disgust me of that landing-place . I felt willing rather to starve at sea than to confront such perils . In the meantime I had a better chance , as I supposed , before me . North of Haulbowline Head , the land runs in a long way , leaving at low tide a long stretch of yellow sand . To the north of that , again , there comes another cape -- Cape of the Woods , as it was marked upon the chart -- buried in tall green pines , which descended to the margin of the sea .
I remembered what Silver had said about the current that sets northward along the whole west coast of Treasure Island , and seeing from my position that I was already under its influence , I preferred to leave XXXXX Head behind me and reserve my strength for an attempt to land upon the kindlier-looking Cape of the Woods .
Benbow Haulbowline barkings bigness fro hours landing-place quarter seaward terrors