T HE coracle -- as I had ample reason to know be-
fore 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 maneuver
she was best at. Even Ben Gunn himself has admitted
that she was "queer to handle till you knew her way."

Certainly I did not know her way. She turned in
every direction but the one I was bound to go; the
most part of the time we were broadside on, and I am
very sure I never should have made the ship at all
but for the tide. By good fortune, paddle as I
pleased, the tide was still sweeping me down; and
there lay the Hispaniola right in the fair way, hardly
to be missed.

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.

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