Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

"Seasickness is just a misunderstanding in the inner ear."

" Jee-doof! " Rev. Spellgood's voice traveled to us in drawling pieces on the wind. "Loave… the Load's marcy…" And the wind moaned in the shrouds the way it did in Polski's fences on winter nights, the loneliest sound in the world, air sawing a thin cry from a wire.

I said, "It might rain."

"Water never hurt anyone."

Jerry said, "Charlie's scared."

"Charlie isn't scared," Father said. "He's studying the shrouds for handholds, aren't you, son?"

"There's a ladder on the post," Clover said.

"Any fool can climb a ladder," Father said. "But those shrouds — if you climb those, you'll be hanging right over the water."

"Up here?" I pointed to where they crossed the deck.

"No," he said, "on the outside." He gestured into the spitting wind. "That's the fun of it. Boys your age used to do that all the time on the great sailing ships."

He was testing me, as he had on the beach near Baltimore, where he had challenged me to sit on the rock. The kingpost was no higher than elms I had climbed in Polski's meadow, but the roll of the ship and the streaming white-chipped sea made my guts ache.

I said, "My foot hurts."

"Use your hands."

In a whisper, I said, "Dad, I'm afraid."

"Then you'll have to do it," he said, "because doing it is the only way of not being afraid of it. Or would you rather join those Holy Rollers and forget the whole thing?"

The Spellgoods had started a hymn, which the wind twisted into a slow-fast grunt-groan.

There were no crosswires on the shrouds. They were simple and thick — six cables angling up to the blocks at the top of the kingpost. If I shinnied them, I'd be dangling. But I saw a better method. By shinnying part of the way and then setting my feet against the far shroud I could move vertically, like walking up a wall by holding a fixed rope. It was possible.

"You're delaying," Father said. "You're just getting more scared."

"The captain might yell at me."

"So it's that fruit you're afraid of!"

Jerry said, "Let me try it, Dad."

"You can go after Charlie."

That was my incentive. In order to see Jerry try and fail, I would have to do it first. I kicked my shoes off and climbed to the lower blocks that held the shrouds to the ship's side. I pulled myself up. Father said, "Good boy." A few feet more and I was looking at the top of his baseball cap.

The wind pressed me, and the gulls, like rags gone mad, screeched at me, as if in revenge for the one I had killed. And I could hear Rev. Spellgood's high voice, leading his family in the hymn. I was only eight or ten feet up, but already the wind was as strong as on a hilltop, for the deck was sheltered by the canvas on the rail. I hoped Father could see my pants flapping, and how the wind dragged my legs out as I climbed. Halfway up, I turned and set my feet against the far shroud and wedged myself there to rest my arms, like a spider in a crack.

I was staring directly down at the sea. It was boiling under me, mostly suds, and some of the spray reached my feet. The shrouds up here played a different tune in the wind, a lonelier cry, because they were closer together. And the roll of the ship made me swing. It was the first time on this ship I had been cold. The movement and the cold sickened me, so I stared at the sea awhile. The weather had gotten so bad it was impossible to tell where the water met the sky, and this made me feel sicker. It all looked like old blankets. Gulls kept screeching at me from high up on the post, slashing at the cottony mist with their beaks.

Braced against the shrouds and trying to walk horizontal, I started off again. The shroud cables were greasy, and my hands and feet slipped in the gunk if I moved too fast. The next time I looked down, Father was tiny. This little figure on the deck was making me do this! And he wasn't even looking! I struggled against the slimy cables in the high wind and saw that I had only six feet to go. But this was the hardest part — the shroud cables were bunched together and I could not fit between them. I could see clearly the wheels in the blocks and the manufacturer's brass plate, speckled with salt, bolted to the top of the kingpost.

Now the whole white ship was pitching and rolling in a hilly black sea. I felt I could not climb any higher. I held on tightly and had another dread — that I would not be able to get down. I could only fall. Miles away, on the whitened water, a dark hooded cloud pushed like a demon through other clouds of shabby yellow. I did not know whether the spats of water hitting me were rain or spray, but their pelting frightened me and froze my hands.

" Attention! " It was the captain's voice coming over the loudspeaker. I was surprised to hear it above the wind. "Rodriguez and Santos to the afterdeck. Wear your life jackets and bring a line. Mr. Fox, stay right where you are!"

I thought he meant me, and hung on. The next thing I knew, a black man was kicking his way up the shrouds beneath me. He wore a yellow life jacket, and a rope was strung out behind him. One thing pleased me — he was climbing just the way I had, shinnying first, then bracing himself against the cables like a spider. His eyes were wide open and he was breathing hard. He appeared just under me, put his arms around my waist, and plucked me off, not saying a word. Then he wrapped his legs around the shroud and slid down, dangling me over the water like a sack of feed. His tight grip and his dog smell were worse than the sight of the sea frothing beneath us. The black man passed me to another man on deck, and that man placed me gently at Father's feet.

The captain meanwhile was shouting at Father and not waiting for answers. Who do you think you are? and Are you trying to kill that boy? and You've got no right—

But Father had crossed his arms. He defied the captain with a kind of deaf-man's smile.

"Have you got a hole in your head!" the captain yelled.

Father uncrossed his arms and looked unconcerned.

"If you want some excitement, you're going to get it, because we're in for a spell of bad weather. But if you give me any more trouble like this, I'll put you all ashore at San Juan. Now you remember that, Mr. Fox." He turned to me and said, "That was real stupid, Charlie. I thought you had more sense."

Father did not speak until the captain had stalked away. Then he said, "If you had climbed a little faster he wouldn't have seen you. By the way, you didn't make it to the top."

Jerry whispered, "Crummo."

I wished then that I had fallen off the shrouds and into the sea and drowned. They would have been sorry. And I had half a mind to throw myself overboard, but one look at the water frightened me.

It was only three in the afternoon, but the sky was blankety gray and the sea swells layered with the chips that were beaten to spittle and moved as slow as paste along the rolling slopes. I staggered, but it was not from the scare I had got on the shroud — Jerry and the twins were staggering, too.

Father said, "There's something wrong with this vessel. Look."

He took a shuffleboard puck and set it on the deck upside-down, on its shiny side. It trembled across the deck, hit a davit, and bumped a railpost on the side.

"The ship's going up and down," Jerry said.

"Just down," Father said. "She's yawing. If she was rolling properly., that shuffleboard pancake would slide back. But she's just setting there."

Clover said, "The deck's all slanty."

"She's listing," Father said. He looked up at the bridge and grinned. "That's why he's all het up. You want to go up there and ask your friend what's wrong?"

He was talking to me. I shook my head. I didn't dare face the captain after what he had said to Father about my climbing the shrouds. The captain didn't understand that this was a game we often played. And if I had done it better, Father would not have been caught and yelled at.