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He spent the next two days in traversing the swamps in a coracle, ascertaining where there was firm ground, and where the morasses were impassable.
It was a night out of ten thousand for my purpose. The fog had now buried all heaven. As the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared, absolute blackness settled down on Treasure Island. And when, at last, I shouldered the coracle and groped my way stumblingly out of the hollow where I had supped, there were but two points visible on the whole anchorage.
The use of pitch and bitumen for smearing the vessel inside and out, though unusual even in Mesopotamian shipbuilding, is precisely the method employed in the kuffah's construction. Arab. kuffah, pl. kufaf; in addition to its common use for the Baghdad coracle, the word is also employed for a large basket. Herodotus, I, 194. The kuffah is formed of wicker-work coated with bitumen.
In half-an-hour's time the two had arrived at another sheet of water which is called Loch Tarbert, and here launching the coracle again, they seated themselves and sailed down the narrow loch. It was now well upon midnight, and there was no moon; but there was little danger to be feared, unless, indeed, some of the Norse outposts might surprise them.
I had scarce time to think scarce time to act and save myself. I was on the summit of one swell when the schooner came stooping over the next. The bowsprit was over my head. I sprang to my feet and leaped, stamping the coracle under water.
It became plain to me that nobody was steering. And, if so, where were the men? Either they were dead drunk, or had deserted her, I thought, and perhaps if I could get on board, I might return the vessel to her captain. The current was bearing coracle and schooner southward at an equal rate.
Drink from the right-hand cup, O my dear." Art stepped into his coracle, and then, wringing her hands, she made yet an attempt to dissuade him from that drear journey. "Do not leave me," she urged. "Do not affront these dangers. Around the palace of Morgan there is a palisade of copper spikes, and on the top of each spike the head of a man grins and shrivels.
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 on the other side into the trough as lightly as a bird. I began after a little to grow very bold and sat up to try my skill at paddling.
But in its early Sumerian form it is just a simple tradition of some great inundation, which overwhelmed the plain of Southern Babylonia and was peculiarly disastrous in its effects. And so its memory survived in the picture of Ziusudu's solitary coracle upon the face of the waters, which, seen through the mists of the Deluge tradition, has given us the Noah's ark of our nursery days.
"Guess you'll have to leave your bayonet where it sticks. But, Capm, we want that line. Can't you shute it away, clost by th' edge?" The third shot was a lucky one, and brought down the precious cord. Then came the work of putting the boat into shape, launching it, getting in the stores, and lastly the voyagers. "Tight's a drum yit," observed Glover, surveying the coracle admiringly.
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