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 XXXXX I lay and dreamed of home and the old Admiral Benbow .
HISPANIOLA Yo-ho-ho coracle disaster fro hours night spars weltering window-sill