Ben Gunn’s boat was safe for someone of my size, but very hard to steer. It went everywhere except where I wanted, and what it liked best was turning round and round. I would never have reached the ship without the tide. But the tide carried me straight to her, and soon I was holding her anchor rope.
The rope was as tight as a bowstring, and the water bubbled all around the ship like a mountain stream. One cut with my knife, and the Hispaniola would go flying away with the tide. But then I remembered that a tight rope, suddenly cut, is as dangerous as a kicking horse. My little boat and I would be knocked right out of the water.
I was lucky again. A light wind came and pushed the ship against the current, and to my great joy I felt the rope go slack in my hand. At once I took out my knife and began to cut the rope, one strand after another, until only two strands held the ship. Then I waited for the next gust of wind.
All this time I could hear loud voices from the cabin. One was the voice of Israel Hands, who had been Flint’s gunner. The other was the voice of the man in the red cap. Both were drunk, and they were furiously angry. They cursed each other, and again and again I thought they would start fighting. On shore, by the fire, someone was singing a long, sad old sailors’ song.
At last the wind came again, the rope went slack, and I cut the last strands.
At once my boat was pushed against the front of the Hispaniola, and the ship began to turn slowly in the current. I worked like mad to get away, because I expected to sink at any moment. Just as I got clear, my hand touched a thin rope hanging from the back of the ship, and I grabbed it.
I can hardly say why. But then curiosity won, and I decided to have one look through the cabin window. I pulled my boat along the rope, hand over hand, and when I was close enough, I stood up carefully and looked in. One look was enough: Hands and the man in the red cap were fighting, each with a hand on the other’s throat.
I dropped down into my boat again, just in time, because I nearly fell into the sea. On the shore the pirates were singing 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 moment in the cabin of the Hispaniola, when my boat jumped suddenly and began to move faster. I looked over my shoulder, and my heart jumped too. The fire was behind me! Now the current was carrying the tall ship and my little boat faster and faster through the narrow water toward the open sea.
Suddenly I heard shouts on the ship and feet running up the ladder. The two drunk men had stopped their fight at last and understood what was happening.
I lay down flat in the bottom of my boat and prayed. I was sure that we would soon meet great breaking waves, and all my troubles would be over. I could perhaps bear to die, but I could not bear to watch it coming. I lay like that for hours, thrown up and down by the waves, wet with spray, waiting for death. At last I grew so tired that I fell asleep, and in my little boat I dreamed of home and the old Admiral Benbow.