ng, a
dull blow told me that the schooner had charged down upon and struck the
coracle and that I was left without retreat on the _Hispaniola_.

CHAPTER XXV

I STRIKE THE JOLLY ROGER

I had scarce gained a position on the bowsprit when the flying jib
flapped and filled upon the other tack with a report like a gun. The
schooner trembled to her keel under the reverse, but next moment, the
other sails still drawing, the jib flapped back again and hung idle.

This had nearly tossed me off into the sea, and now I lost no time,
crawled back along the bowsprit and tumbled headforemost on the deck.

I was on the lee side of the forecastle, and the mainsail, which was
still drawing, concealed from me a certain portion of the after-deck.
Not a soul was to be seen. The planks, which had not been swabbed since
the mutiny, bore the print of many feet; and an empty bottle, broken by
the neck, tumbled to and fro like a live thing in the scuppers.

Suddenly the _Hispaniola_ came right into the wind. The jibs behind me
cracked aloud; the rudder slammed to; the whole ship gave a sickening
heave and shudder; and at the same moment the main-boom swung inboard,
the sheet groaning in the blocks, and showed me the lee after-deck.

There were the two watchmen, sure enough; Red-cap on his back, as stiff
as a handspike, with his arms stretched out like those of a crucifix,
and his teeth showing through his open lips; Israel Hands propped
against the bulwarks, his chin on his chest, his hands lying open before
him on the deck, his face as white, under its tan, as a tallow candle.

For a while the ship kept bucking and sidling like a vicious horse, the
sails filling, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swinging to
and fro till the mast groaned aloud under the strain. 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 homemade, lopsided
coracle, now gone to the bottom of the sea.

At every jump of the schooner, Red-cap slipped to and fro; but--what was
ghastly to behold--neither his attitude nor his fixed teeth-disclosing
grin was any way disturbed by this rough usage. At every jump, too,
Hands appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the
deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting
toward the stern, so that his face b