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Updated: June 1, 2025
In the narrow channel that separates Inch Marnock from Bute she saw a tiny coracle with a man on board. The little boat drew to the beach of St. Ninian's Bay, where the man stepped out and began to run. Staggering in his gait, he fell; then rose again and again fell.
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 seaway; 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.
Now and again, too, there would come a cloud of light sprays over the bulwark, and a heavy blow of the ship's bows against the swell: so much heavier weather was made of it by this great rigged ship than by my home-made, lop-sided coracle, now gone to the bottom of the sea.
Some writers, indulging in the Darwinian theory of development, would make us believe that the ironclad of the present day is the legitimate offspring of the ancient coracle or wicker-work boat which is still to be found afloat on the waters of the Wye, and on some of the rivers of the east coast; but if such is the case, the descent must be one of many ages, for it is probable that the Britons had stout ships long before the legions of Cassar set their feet upon our shores.
The gradual development of the huge coracle into a ship would have been encouraged by the Semitic use of the term "ship" to describe it; and the attempt to retain something of its original proportions resulted in producing the unwieldy ark of later tradition. The interior stories are necessarily reduced to three.
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.
Gilian turned round with a start of alarm, for he had been on some coracle of fancy, sailing upon magic seas, and thus to break upon his reverie with the high Gaelic of Skye was to plunge him in chilling waters. "Thig an so come here," said the seaman, beckoning, setting an easy foot upon the deck.
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 coast had altogether disappeared, and the huge ocean vast, stormy, and threatening heaved and hissed all around them. It seemed impossible that they should live until morning. But Rufus Dawes, with his eyes fixed on some object visible alone to him, hugged the child in his arms, and drove the quivering coracle into the black waste of night and sea.
When he left the Casa Grande after breakfast he contrived to kiss Clara's hand, but it did not once occur to him that it would be proper to bid her farewell. He was very far indeed from guessing that in the knot of the lariat which was fast to the bow of his coracle there was a fatal gash. Glover, have you thoroughly overhauled the cord?"
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