Unexpectedly, Elkins bellowed across the deck. “Bowyer — in the maintop, clew garnets.” He paused just long enough to be noticed. “Kydd — get up there with him.”
“Come with me, Tom lad,” Bowyer said quietly, “and be sure and look where you want ter go, never back where you’ve been.”
In one move, Kydd’s view of his place in the scheme of things was changed. After a lifetime of living and moving in two dimensions, he was now to join the select band of those who would know the third.
He gulped and followed, aware of the eyes of his previous fellow laborers on him.
Bowyer crossed to the side of the ship, seized the aftermost shroud and in a little half jump hoisted himself up on to the broad top of the bulwark. He swung down to the main channel on the outside of the hull, the true beginning of the tracery of rope ladder leading up aloft. “Let’s be havin’ yer!” he called.
Kydd grabbed the same shroud and kicked his legs up. To his mortification he found that with feet correctly on the bulwark, he hung backwards over the deck from the inward-sloping shroud, unable to move around to the outer side.
Bowyer’s hand reached for his collar and with surprising strength pulled Kydd upright and around. They stood together on the bulwark. Even these few feet of altitude were sufficient to alter forever his notion of the ship. Every man on deck now was lower than he; the deck itself was observably in plan, and he felt a curious pleasure at the satisfying curve of the deck-line as it swept far forward.
“Right, now, Tom, you goes first, ’n’ I’ll be right behind you.”
Bowyer stepped aside, and there was nothing now before Kydd but the main shrouds leading up to a final focus — the big platform of the main fighting top.
He addressed himself to the venture. The thick shrouds soaring up had thin lines across them to form a ladder. He began to climb, feet feeling shakily for the thin rope, looking obediently upward.
“Don’t put yer hands on the ratlines,” Bowyer called from below him, “use the shrouds — they’ll never give way on yer.”
Kydd had a brief but intense picture of the thinner line snapping in his clutching hands, letting him hurtle backwards to his doom. Nervously he moved to grip tightly the thick black vertical shrouds, shiny with use.
Despite himself, he became aware of his increasing height, the shrouds on the other side getting closer, the deck dropping away below. He continued upward, foot finding the next ratline above while he hung on grimly; a push upward and a pause at the new level while his other foot relocated; then moving his hands gingerly one by one.
He knew he was not moving efficiently, but at least he was safe like that. His leg muscles burned with fatigue and he stopped for a moment to rest.
The shrouds shivered and Bowyer appeared on the broad span of shrouds next to him.
“I’m fine, Joe,” Kydd said.
“Yeah — but watch that feller over there.” Bowyer was pointing to the opposite ratlines. A seaman was mounting the shrouds in a fast, economic swing. “See how he uses his hands to pull himself up, only rests his feet. Doesn’t go at it like he was climbin’ stairs.”
Kydd watched the graceful continuity of the sailor’s movements; a fluid motion he could now sense was achieved by hauling forcefully on alternate hands, the feet just following. He tried it; the transfer of effort to the hands felt awkward at first, but he could feel the potential for a more connected movement. He persevered, his concentration on the required actions diverting his mind from his situation.
The main top approached with a reality it never had from the deck, foursquare and solid, with a big lanthorn rearing up oddly from the after edge. His arms ached. He knew now where the best seamen got their deep chests. Stopping for a breather, he idly looked down.
It was a mistake. What he saw was an ugly distortion — an impossibly narrow deck on which the people moving about it had become flattened, elongated disks, their feet blipping out in front of them like penguins’.
But what was so hard to take was the sheer vertigo of being at a killing height while clinging halfway up a vertical surface. Animal instinct made him freeze, pinned helplessly somewhere between heaven and earth. He clung fiercely, his eyes closed.
A shaking in the shrouds told him that Bowyer had arrived next to him. Whatever Bowyer said, Kydd vowed to himself that he would not release his hold. Perhaps Bowyer could work some rescue plan to lower him to the deck on a rope.
“Bit of a hard beat to wind’d, first time aloft,” Bowyer mused. “Um, ever you gets in the situation you needs yer bearings fast. What I does, I looks at where I’m at first.” He waited. “These here shrouds, Tom, very curious ropes. See here, they’ve got four strands, not yer usual three. And they’re laid up with the sun, not like your anchor cable, which you may’ve noticed is laid up agin the sun.”