Do as you pleased , she always made more leeway than anything else , and turning round and round was the manoeuvre 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 fairway , 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 -LRB- for , the farther I went , the brisker grew the current of the ebb -RRB- , 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 , XXXXX the stern window and threw out something , which I divined to be an empty bottle .
Do admitted brought bubbled came chattered felt knocked opened recognized