Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (best ebook reader txt) 📗

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 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 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 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 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

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 southwest 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 Haulbowline

Head behind me and reserve my strength for an attempt to

land upon the kindlier-looking Cape of the Woods.

 

There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea. The wind

blowing steady and gentle from the south, there was no

contrariety between that and the current, and the

billows rose and fell unbroken.

 

Had it been otherwise, I must long ago have perished;

but as it was, it is surprising how easily and securely

my little and light boat could ride. Often, as I still

lay at the bottom and kept no more than an eye above

the gunwale, I would see a big blue summit heaving

close above me; yet the coracle would but bounce a

little, dance as if on springs, and subside