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: