Chase the Morning полностью

I even quite enjoyed the challenge, at first. Rock-climbing had quelled any great fear of heights; and I needn’t go all the way, after all, just up to the top platform. The taut shrouds weren’t much harder to climb than a ladder, but the step-like ratlines flexed slightly under my hands at every movement of the ship, strangely alive. I’d never felt so keenly aware of the Defiance as a living thing before, the sailors’ sense; it was like scaling the mane of some immense sea-beast. Almost as frightening, too. This wasn’t like a rockface; it swayed, casually, unpredictably, as if it had a mind of its own. And the higher you got, the wider the swing. The first time I looked down the deck seemed miles distant already, Mall not more than a speck staring up at me, blonde fluff blowing. She couldn’t be thinking of coming after me, could she? I found myself hurrying to reach the top; but when I got there, it was almost scarier to sit on that bare platform in the whistling wind with no rail or anything else to hold onto. Only the masthead, with its crow’s-nest for the look-out, offered any kind of security. I didn’t want to go slinking down again so soon, even if Mall had cooled off a bit in the meantime. I stepped into the topmast shrouds and began to climb.

This time I carefully didn’t look down, and it seemed to help. I reached the foretop quite quickly, though the ropes raised blisters and the sweat was stinging my cuts. The crow’s-nest was nothing like those nice secure tubs you see in films – just another bare platform, but with iron loops set at waist height on either side of the mast, and a low rail to slip your toes under. The look-out, a picklefaced she-pirate with the build of a Russian trawler captain, showed me how to fasten my belt to the loops, cackling all the while.

‘You and Mistress Mall, heh-heh! Saw you from atop here! A fine disarmin’ stroke you have on you. Go try’t on a Wolf! But ware the return thrust, heh-heh-heh!’ Busy finding my footing, I ignored all that till she thrust her leathery face into mine, more serious now. ‘Twas a fell time in these parts to be tryin’ such jinks, young sir! Best not, when the souffle Erzulie’s a-blowin’! Or there’s no tellin’ what the end might be!’

‘The what?’

The landwind – did you not feel’t? Aye, well, that’s what they calls the sigh of Erzulie down this-a-way, the warm airs blowin’ from the land at even. Aye, and a wicked hot wench she is, to be sure! Sets fire in the blood without reck’nin’ how it’ll burn, or who.’

I grinned. ‘She doesn’t sound so bad. I could use a little fire in mine, maybe.’

‘There’s fire that warms and fire that burns, hah? And when she’s Erzulie Blood-i’the-Eye, Gé-Rouge, then ’ware all that’s young and open; for she’ll run madness in their reins! Might’ve brought you a sword in the heart, she might, that riggish mistress! For is not seven such the sign of her – heh? It’s not for nothin’ they’ve another name for that wind, down Jamaicey way – the Undertaker, so they call it. Sweeps the last breath of the dyin’ away!’ And with a final cackle she plunged over the edge of the platform.

‘Hey!’ I protested, or something equally sensible – and looked down after her.

That really was a mistake.

Emptiness roared up into my face. It was like looking off a cliff – and having it whipped out from under you. There was nothing directly beneath me. No deck, no ship – nothing but the churning ocean an impossible distance below, and the waves heaving greedily up towards me, dropping away with sickening suddenness. My fingers clamped tight to the loop, but the sweat made them slip. My toes were dug in under the rail, but my legs were shaking. I had to turn my head to see the Defiance, almost hidden behind the bulging sails; she looked like a toy boat at the end of a supple stick, bounced and buffeted this way and that by the sea she rode on. And at this height every little movement of that heeling deck became a lurch, a wild whipping sway …

After eternity or thereabouts I managed to force my eyes away, to those inscrutable hills. Against their softly tossing treetops the sway was less noticeable, and I began to ride with the rhythm of it. After a while I was able to turn my mind to the job I seemed to have got stuck with, and risk a careful scan around the darkening horizon. I saw no more than we’d seen since we left the Mississippi; the sun, angry at its fall, and nothing new under it. No other ship; no turn in our luck.

I shifted uneasily on my windblown perch. Look with your own damned sheep’s eyes, Le Stryge had said; and I’d ended up doing exactly that. Just coincidence, of course. It had damn well better be coincidence. But then you couldn’t be sure of anything around here.