Paul Theroux - The Mosquito Coast

Father said, "Why it's listing so much it's parted my hair the wrong way! It's making the Spellgoods sing off-key, and the Reverend starts in his prayers with 'Amen.' My kids can't swallow, the blood rushes to their heads when they're sitting down. It's so slanty, my wife scratched her ankle thinking she was scratching her ear!"

Mr. Bummick held his ears and laughed so hard he brought on a coughing fit.

"He thinks I'm joking," Father said, frowning. "I'm only telling the truth. I have to do everything upside-down or it won't work. I dropped a coffee and it came back and hit me in the face. I feel like an astronaut. My stomach thinks I'm in Australia."

"That's enough, Mr. Fox," the captain said, but Mr. Bummick was still laughing and coughing.

"And look," Father said, holding up his finger stump. "Your ship's so topsy-turvy I cut myself shaving and took half my finger off." Quickly — because of the gasps of horror: it was a very ugly finger — he said, "Just joking."

The captain turned his back on Father and said, "Don't worry, folks. Everything's nailed down."

He walked to the door. His walking proved Father's point. One shoulder was higher than the other.

Father said, "I'm not nailed down, Captain."

"I can arrange it so you don't move a goddamned inch, Mr. Fox."

Father said, "I appreciate that, Captain. But I've been studying the degree of list on your ship, and my observations lead me to conclude that she's yawing."

"How so?"

"Oh, because the hull's center of lateral resistance is nearer the bow than the ship's center of gravity? Because she's veering, never mind the sway and surge? Because I don't think we'd have much luck in a heavy sea?"

He stopped talking just as a wave hit the port side, dragging the dining room sideways and flipping more soup out of everyone's bowl. The captain tottered and had to hold the doorhandle for balance.

"That sort of thing," Father said. "Now this is no time to be proud. We know it's an imperfect world. The innate stupidity of inanimate objects — isn't that how it goes? Gurney Spellgood's prayers aren't working. I think God's trying to tell us that he'll help us if we help ourselves. It's no good saying 'Don't worry,' because this is the Caribbean and — correct me if I'm wrong — this is where little storms grow up into big bad hurricanes. That's not a jumbo jet passing the porthole — that's the wind."

The captain said, "You're holding up dinner, my friend."

"Shucks," Father said — I had never heard him say "shucks" before—"no one's going to keep it swallowed long enough for it to matter. But I was saying, I think this ship is listing. Am I right?"

"It's a small problem of weight distribution."

"The Ping-Pong ball hasn't moved, so let's call it a list. It's hard to slide cargo uphill, isn't it?"

"We'll winch it."

"He admits it's shifted," Father said.

"It's a small problem."

Windborne rain sizzled against the porthole glass like a spatter on a griddle.

"All the better," Father said, "because I have a small solution. My guess is that it's a pump problem, bulkhead sealed with a few tons of the Gulf Stream, no way of redistributing the weight. Captain, I think I can help you."

"I doubt it."

"I'm sure of it. I'd like to participate. And if I can't straighten out this ship — if you're not happy with my work — you can put me and my family ashore at the nearest port."

"It might be Cuba." The captain passed his hands across his mouth. Was he smiling?

Father said, "That prospect surely ought to tempt you."

The captain was silent. At the porthole the wind and rain were like burning sticks. Finally he glared at Father but addressed the others. "You people are witnesses. If this man's wasting my time, he's going to pay for it."

"You've got nothing to lose."

"You're the only one around here with anything to lose. You and your family — God help them."

"These people are bricks."

"Mr. Fox, you're on. See me after dinner and I'll give you a chance. But you'd better eat well, because by morning you might find yourself in a strange country, where they eat people like you for breakfast."

Captain Smalls went out and slammed the door. There was silence, and no one knew where to look.

Father said, "What did I say about this ship being upside-down? All the letters in my alphabet soup are backwards!"

But no one laughed. The storm had worsened, and now everyone knew why the ship was leaning. The rest of the meal was served' quickly by staggering waiters, holding their trays in two hands instead of on their fingertips.

The argument afterward, which I heard from the in-between toilet, was about me. Father wanted me to come along. "It's an education," he said. But Mother said no. She did not want me staying up half the night and maybe banging my head in the engine room. Father said I knew more about fixing pumps than those savages, but he did not mean it; he wanted someone to keep him company. He didn't like working alone. He needed a person there to hear his speeches I would not have been much help with the work; my hands still hurt from climbing the shrouds.

Mother said, "You got us into hot water, Allie. Now you can get us out of it" — speaking to him the way she might speak to Clover.

"It's the captain who's in hot water," Father said, confident as ever. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't have offered to help. I'd like to see him laughing on the other side of his face. But I'm concerned for the safety of the passengers, and I think it's time this ship made some proper headway. Here's my toolbox. Where's my baseball hat? I can't do anything without my baseball hat."

Before he set off — and he looked the way he did as he went to work each morning at Polski's — he put his head into our cabin and said to me, "Got a message for your friend?" Without waiting for an answer, he ducked into the passageway, bumping his toolbox against the wall with each shake of the ship.

Then I knew he was doing this for my sake alone, because the captain had invited me to the bridge, because I had admired the sonar, and because the captain had yelled at him in front of me, "Have you got a hole in your head!" He had already proved that he could outquote Gurney Spellgood, and he was more than a match for Mr. Bummick, but now he was trying to outcaptain the captain.

I did not doubt that he would succeed. I had never known him to fail. People sometimes misunderstood Father, because he frowned when he joked and he laughed when he was serious. He also gave you information you did not need, like "These are davits." But those of us who knew him never doubted him. If there was one thing Father did not know, it was this: he did not need to prove himself to us. At the time, I thought he enjoyed taking risks. Yet what is a strong man's risk? He was fearless, so we were safe. I was the boy in Rev. Spellgood's story — I believed in Father. I was not afraid.

All night long the ship received the shock of waves and wind, and the sound was like the tumbling of flinty boulders against the hull. I hit my head against my bunk frame, and Clover and April cried. They woke me up to tell me they could not sleep. I listened to the rough water. It sometimes seemed as if it were sloshing across the floor and down the passageways and we were under the sea. All night in my dreams I drowned. And the morning was dark, the ship still pitched and rolled. But it did not strain anymore. Its rolling was an easy movement — not the sudden stages of dropping, all the waves hitting one side, and the downwardness of decks. It was a freer unhooked motion, a seesawing spank that sent my pencils slowly back and forth on our cabin table.

Father was not at breakfast. Rev. Spellgood led his family in "God who gave us Jeedoof's weal" and the Bummicks ate in silence. Mother cracked her boiled egg with the back of her spoon as if she wanted to give it a concussion. She said, "At least Dad doesn't make us sing."