Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"That's chloroform," Father said. But missing the quotation stung him. He turned on Spellgood and in front of his big family he said in an annoyed voice, "But how many pushups can you do? Hah!"

The Spellgoods were silent.

Father said, "'Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.' Ecclesiastes. Besides, I've got other weenies to roast." And he went back to his maps.

It was from one of Rev. Spellgood's daughters, a girl named Emily, who had a chinless ducklike face, that I found out where the Unicorn was headed. It was now hot and sunny. Three days out of Baltimore and it seemed that spring had become summer. The crew walked around without shirts. I spent most of the day fishing.

Emily came up to me and said, "You never catch anything."

"It's too hot," I said, because in the past I had always fished in brooks and in shady sections of the Connecticut River. "The fish go to the bottom in hot weather, and don't eat."

"If you think this is hot wait until you get to La Ceiba," she said.

"Where's that?"

"It's where you're going on this boat, silly. In Honduras."

It was the second time in mv life I had heard that name, and it had the sound of a dark secret.'

Then a young Spellgood boy joined us. Emily said, "This kid doesn't even know where we're going!" They both laughed at me.

But it was worth being mocked to find out where Father was taking us. And now I understood the business with Mr. Semper and the men. They were from Honduras. Father was trading places. On the map outside the radio room, Honduras looked like the forehead of land on Father's map, but smaller, now like an empty turtle shell, side view, with fingerprints all over it, and La Ceiba a polka dot on the coast. That town was almost worn away from being touched. And pins on the map showed our progress from Baltimore. The last pin was parallel with Florida, which was why we were so hot.

The sea was as level as a rink — green near the ship and blue far-off. There was no breeze. The deck was a frying pan, and some of its paint had blistered from the heat. I kept fishing.

Emily Spellgood would not leave me alone. She was about my own age and wore pedal pushers. She said, "It's a whole lot hotter than this in La Ceiba. You've never been there, but we have. My father's real famous there. We've got a mission in the jungle. It's really neat."

I wanted to catch something, to show her up. I payed out my line and watched the flocks of seagulls that followed us. They hovered goggling over the stern, they bobbed in our wake, they dived for scraps that were sluiced out of the galley. They never settled on the ship, but they would scissor lumps of bread out of my hand if I held it to their beaks. Father hated them. "Scavengers!" But they gave me the idea for fishing. I had seen several pluck mackerel-sized fish out of the sea behind the ship.

I used bacon rind on my hook — no float, and only enough of a sinker to let me fling the line out and troll. Emily stayed in back of me saying, "It's called Guampu, we've got a fantastic motorboat, and all the Indians—"

My line went tight. I jerked it. There was a human scream among the gull squawks. I had hooked a bird. The hook must have been halfway down his throat, because when he flew up he took my line with him, tugging it like a kite string and screeching. He beat his wings hard and tried to get away. He plunged into the wake of the ship, then came up again overhead and made as if to fly off. But when the line went tight he tumbled in the air and made pitiful cries. The other gulls fluttered foolishly around him, pecking at his head out of curiosity and fear.

I let go of the line. It whipped across the water like a trout cast, and the big panicky bird flapped over the waves dragging fifty yards of fishing line from his beak. He did not fly far. A little way off, he flopped into the water and sat there splashing his head like a farmyard duck and raking his wings against the sea.

"You killed him," Emily said. "You killed that poor bird. That's bad luck — and it's cruel, too! I thought you were nice, but you're a murderer!" She ran down the deck, and later I heard her yell, "Dad, that boy killed a seagull!"

For the rest of the day, I walked around with an ache in my throat, as if I had swallowed a hook.

Father said, "Kill one for me, Charlie" — how had he heard about it? — "but don't let anyone see you."

The next time I saw Rev. Spellgood, he looked at me as if he wanted to throw me overboard. Then he said, "Have you said good morning to Jesus? Or do you just do pushups like your dad, and turn your back on the Lord?"

I said, "My father can do fifty pushups."

"Samson could do five hundred. But he was wholesome."

That night it was our turn to join the captain for dinner. I had set eyes on him only once before this, when he was wearing his captain's hat. Without it, and in his khaki clothes, he looked like any farmer, a little sour and shorthaired, about Polski's age. He had no neck, so his ears, the lobes of them, reached his collar. His blue eyes had no lashes, which made him look as if he doubted everything you said, and gave him a fishy stare, like a cold cod on a slab. He had a small narrow mouth and fish lips that sucked air without opening.

His dining room had a low ceiling, and the fittings were so darkly varnished they looked pickled — pickled shelves, pickled wall-boards, and a pickled wooden chest that said CAPT. AMBROSE SMALLS on its lid.

Captain Smalls was talking to another man when we entered the room. They were at the table, bent over some charts, and the man, whose shirt and hands were greasy, snatched his cap off when he saw us but kept talking.

"It's got to be the welds," he said. "I don't see what else it could be across there. Unless that pump is losing suction. You think we should seal the bulkhead?"

"It's number six — one of the biggest." the captain said. "Better check the ballast tanks. You say it's bad?"

"At the moment it's just a condensation problem."

The captain stood and squared his shoulders. "These good people are hungry. See me later."

The man rolled up his charts and sidled out of the room.

Father said, "Instead of drowning your problems, why not teach them to swim?"

The captain pressed his mouth shut and regarded Father with his flat lashless eyes.

"Got a leak in your tub, eh?" Father frowned — he was joking.

The captain frowned fishily back at him. "A bilge pump's acting up on the port side. Nothing for you to worry about. It's my problem."

"Must be a gasket in one of the cylinder heads," Father said. "Sea water's hell on gaskets. Perishes the material, even your so-called miracle fibers. All this heat. And gaskets don't stand for neglect. They'll just die on you. But that's all right — we can swim."

"No cylinders — it's a centrifugal pump. And we're not even sure it's the pump," the captain said. "Please sit down."

Father jerked his napkin open by snapping it like a piece of laundry. He tucked it beneath his chin, giving himself a bib. Jerry and the twins did the same, but I put my napkin over my stomach, as Captain Smalls had done. Mother put hers on her lap. Father glanced at me and smiled, because I had imitated the captain.

"Must be the vanes," Father said. "Or it could be the motor. I wouldn't advise you to seal the bulkhead. It'll just fill up and you'll get so complacent you'll shut off the pump. That would set up vibrations. Sympathetic vibrations. They'd shake your teeth loose, raise hell with your ship—"

"Your soup's getting cold," the captain said. "This your first visit to Honduras?"

Father spooned soup into his mouth and did not reply.

Mother said, "It's more than a visit. We're planning to stay awhile."