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 sea-way; 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 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 farther 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 favoured me, I should have had to abandon my design.

But the light airs which had begun blowing from the south-east

and south had hauled round after nightfall into the south-west.

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 night-cap. 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 her 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 fibres 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 tobe

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 neighbour, 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 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 aeto 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.

****

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