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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.
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.
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.
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.
"Now let us see what we have got in our pen." He paddled a short way along the broad to a point where a little lane of water ran up through the rushes. This narrowed rapidly and the lad got out from his boat into the water, as the coracle could proceed no further between the lines of rushes. The water was knee-deep and the bottom soft and oozy.
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.
With one hand I caught the jib-boom, while my foot was lodged between the stay and the brace; and as I still clung there panting, a dull blow told me that the schooner had charged down upon and struck the coracle, and that I was left without retreat on the Hispaniola.
Blake, the mighty mystic, will see the Angels of the Revelation, driving their terrible way above Lambeth it is not common nor unclean. The fisherman, plying his coracle on the Thames will behold the consecration of the great new Abbey of Westminster celebrated with mass and chant and awful lights in the dead mid-noon of night by that Apostle who is the Rock of the Church.
Petrock was a Celtic saint, probably a Welshman, who went to Ireland for his religious education; he crossed to Cornwall in a coracle, and landed in this estuary of the Camel. He founded an oratory here, and probably another at Little Petherick.
She would have it that in coining days it was her own land, this fog-girt isle where painted savages can scarce row a wicker coracle from point to point, which shall at last take the trident which Carthage and Rome have dropped." The smile which flickered upon the old patrician's keen features died away suddenly, and his fingers closed upon his companion's wrist.
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