Treasure Island

Trying to navigate the tiny, lop-sided vessel is frustrating (Chapter 23, "The Ebb-Tide Runs"), but the quickly ebbing tide carries Jim to the ship, where he grabs the hawser, feeling it taut as the tide pulls the Hispaniola upon its anchor. When a puff of wind moves the vessel slightly, causing the hawser to slacken, he cuts all but two strands of the rope and waits for another breeze to slacken it again. And, as he waits, he hears the voices of two men in the cabin — Israel Hands and one other, who had been in the fight earlier that day. They are drunk and quarrelling loudly. Jim cuts through the rest of the hawser and the schooner begins to turn slowly, threatening to overturn his boat. Furiously, he paddles alongside to the ship's stern, and then on impulse he grabs a line trailing from the ship and pulls his boat closer, until at last he can stand and look partially into the cabin through the stern window. There he sees Hands and the other man wrestling drunkenly but powerfully, each attempting to strangle the other. As he watches, the motion of the ship changes, and he perceives that it has been caught in the swiftly ebbing tide and is spinning toward the open sea. In a moment the two men aboard the Hispaniola discover, belatedly, the dangerous situation they are in and run on deck. Jim's boat, caught in the wake, is drawn along with the ship, and Jim is sure he'll be killed when the ship eventually hits the powerful breakers at the end of the narrows. He is powerless to do anything. He lies down in the boat and, despite (or perhaps because of) his fear, drifts into sleep.