The Voyage of the Unquiet Ice Read Online Free Page A

his lips pressed thin with anger and concentration. He was not totally inexperienced at this, for he’d been allowed to ascend the shrouds to a certain height in his training. And the ropes were strung firmly, so there was no particular difficulty in mounting them – at least in normal conditions.
    But the rolling of the ship changed everything. At one moment the ladder seemed to be almost horizontal, as the Chloe tilted away towards the far railing, and then, when it tilted back, the ladder would go to vertical and beyond. And worse, the rolling made the great mainmast itself flex as it whipped back and forth, and so the shrouds, fixed to the mast, were alternately sagging and then snapping tight under Dow’s hands.
    Even so, before long, he was nearing the top of the lower shrouds, which was as high as he’d ever climbed, a hundred and forty feet up. Already the main deck looked faraway and narrow. But now came his first real test, for to reach the upper mast meant climbing over the musket deck, the small platform which topped the lower mast, and upon which the upper mast stood. It was called the musket deck because at battle stations a party of marines were posted there to snipe at opposing ships.
    The problem was that to reach the platform a climber had to swing out under the overhang and then haul himself over the edge. There were ropes fixed for that very purpose, and Dow had seen it done hundreds of times by the crew, effortlessly – but he’d never done it himself. He looked out to sea; a series of green hills and valleys were in motion beneath the ship. But if he timed it so that the Chloe was upright upon one of the crests … He swung himself out, knowing that the longer he delayed, the harder it would become. But it was more awkward then he’d expected to get an arm beyond the overhang, and in the meantime the Chloe slid from the crest; suddenly there was no deck beneath Dow, there was only a gulf of air and then the water. His feet slipped from the ropes and for instant of terror he dangled there, as laughter came piercing from below.
    But it was only a moment, then the ship was in the trough and rolling back again, and without quite knowing how Dow had his feet secure in the ropes and was manhandling himself over the rim of the musket deck to safety. From below, and from other places in the rigging, he heard more laughter, and also a slow, sarcastic clapping of hands.
    He raised himself to standing, fingers gripped tightly to the upper shrouds, and gazed about while he regained his breath. Walls of canvas rose all around him; mainsails, topsails, royals and gallants, mizzens and jibs – and many other studs and stays besides – all rippling and snapping as the cold breeze ebbed and surged. But the mainmast rose above them all. Dow took a last breath, set his foot to the upper shrouds, and climbed once more.
    The ladder was steeper and narrower now. And as he ascended above the larger sails, more light and air opened about him, so that the nakedness of the fall below was all the more exposed. And now he began to experience the true awfulness of the ship’s rolling. It was no longer a matter of queasy undulations; two hundred feet above the deck, it was a matter of being flung bodily back and forth in long stomach-lifting swoops as the sky and the sea pitched and plummeted and traded places.
    It was one of the most horribly insecure feelings Dow had ever known, but he climbed on, and at last the barrel of the crow’s nest was looming overhead. There was no hole in the bucket’s base, however, so Dow would have to again sling himself out from under to climb in. The overhang was not so severe this time, but he was two hundred and fifty feet in the air now, and the deck was no more than a narrow plank far beneath his feet, surrounded by an ocean ready to swallow him whole.
    Nevertheless, the barrel above offered the only refuge to be found this high, so fear itself