Chapter: 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,
lopsided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more leeway
than anything else, and turning round and round was the maneuver 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 further 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 favored me, I should have had to abandon my design. But the
light airs which had begun blowing from the southeast and south had
hauled round after nightfall into the southwest. 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
nightcap. 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 the 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 fibers 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 neighbor, 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 around 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 intervened, and in my sea-tossed coracle
I lay and dreamed of home and the old "Admiral Benbow."

 Handling the coracle (Gunn's small boat) was very difficult, though the boat is small and appropriate for a person of his size. He rows the boat with the water currents. He grasps the hawser when he gets closer to the Hispaniola. Suddenly it occurs to Jim that cutting the hawser means cutting free the huge Hispaniola. With her size and weight it would easily topple the coracle. This thought makes him change his plans but the south sea wind comes to his relief. He feels the hawser loosen his hand. The wind forces the Hispaniola to move in the opposite direction. So, Jim picks up the knife and cuts the hawser loose leaving just two strands of fiber uncut. He waits for another strong wind to finish the task. Jim hears loud voices from the cabin and recognizes Israel Hands voice. Jim hears the crew arguing violently inside. When the long awaited breeze comes, Jim cuts loose the last fibers of the hawser. The Hispaniola begins to spin and this terrifies Jim. When the coracle moves with the motion of the ship, Jim impulsively, holds a chord hanging from the ship. He decides to climb up the chord to get a look at what is going on within the cabin of the ship. One glance tells Jim that men are all drunk. He climbs down to his boat. The coracle changes its course and moves toward the sea. The ship too makes its way southward. The men on board, Jim knows, dont realize that the ship has been freed from it's anchor. Suddenly the ship turns by twenty degrees. Violent shouts follow this and the crew and now Jim sees that the men are aware of the disaster. Unable to face the fact that his life might end on high sea, he lies down in the coracle and prays. Soon he goes to sleep dreaming of his home and the Admiral Benbow.

