Fisk and I retreated to the galley while I waited for word. During that time he questioned me regarding my determination.
“Miss Doyle,” he pressed, “you have agreed to climb to the top of the royal yard. Do you know that’s the highest sail on the main mast? One hundred and thirty feet up. You can reach it only two ways. You can shimmy up the mast itself. Or you can climb the shrouds, using the ratlines for your ladder.”
I nodded as if I fully grasped what he was saying. The truth was I didn’t even wish to listen. I just wanted to get past the test.
“And Miss Doyle,” he went on, “if you slip and fall you’ll be lucky to drop into the sea and drown quickly. No mortal could pluck you out fast enough to save you. Do you understand that?”
I swallowed hard but nodded. “Yes.”
“Because if you’re not lucky you’ll crash to the deck. Fall that way and you’ll either maim or kill yourself by breaking your neck. Still certain?”
“Yes,” I repeated, though somewhat more softly.
“I’ll give you this,” he said with a look that seemed a mix of admiration and contempt, “Zachariah was right. You’re as steady a girl as ever I’ve met.”
Foley soon returned. “We’re agreed,” he announced. “Not a one stands in favor of your signing on, Miss Doyle. Not with what you are. We’re all agreed to that. But if you climb as high as the royal yard and make it down whole, and if you still want to sign on, you can come as equal. You’ll get no more from us, Miss Doyle, but no less either.”
Fisk looked at me for my answer.
“I understand,” I said.
“All right then,” Foley said. “The captain’s still in his cabin and not likely to come out till five bells. You can do it now.”
“Now?” I quailed.
“Now before never.”
So it was that the four men escorted me onto the deck. There I found that the rest of the crew had already gathered.
Having fully committed myself, I was overwhelmed by my audacity. The masts had always seemed tall, of course, but never so tall as they did at that moment.
When I reached the deck and looked up my courage all but crumbled. My stomach turned. My legs grew weak.
Not that it mattered. Fisk escorted me to the mast as though I were being led to die at the stake. He seemed as grim as I.
To grasp fully what I’d undertaken to do, know again that the height of the mainmast towered one hundred and thirty feet from the deck. This mast was, in fact, three great rounded lengths of wood, trees, in truth, affixed one to the end of the other. Further, it supported four levels of sails, each of which bore a different name. In order, bottom to top, these were called the main yard, topsail, topgallant, and finally royal yard.
My task was to climb to the top of the royal yard. And come down. In one piece. If I succeeded I’d gain the opportunity of making the climb fifty times a day.
As if reading my terrified thoughts Fisk inquired gravely, “How will you go, Miss Doyle? Up the mast or on the ratlines?”
Once again I looked up. I could not possibly climb the mast directly. The stays and shrouds with their ratlines would serve me better.
“Ratlines,” I replied softly.
“Then up you go.”
I will confess it, at that moment my nerves failed. I found myself unable to move. With thudding heart I looked frantically around. The members of the crew, arranged in a crescent, were standing like death’s own jury.
It was Barlow who called out, “A blessing goes with you, Miss Doyle.”
To which Ewing added, “And this advice, Miss Doyle. Keep your eyes steady on the ropes. Don’t you look down. Or up.”
For the first time I sensed that some of them at least wanted me to succeed. The realization gave me courage.
With halting steps and shallow breath, I approached the rail only to pause when I reached it. I could hear a small inner voice crying, “Don’t! Don’t!”
But it was also then that I heard Dillingham snicker, “She’ll not have the stomach.”
I reached up, grasped the lowest deadeye, and hauled myself atop the rail. That much I had done before. Now, I maneuvered to the outside so that I would be leaning into the rigging and could even rest on it.
Once again I looked at the crew, down at them, I should say. They were staring up with blank expressions.
Recollecting Ewing’s advice, I shifted my eyes and focused them on the ropes before me. Then, reaching as high as I could into one of the middle shrouds, and grabbing a ratline, I began to climb.
The ratlines were set about sixteen inches one above the other, so that the steps I had to take were wide for me. I needed to pull as much with arms as climb with legs. But line by line I did go up, as if ascending an enormous ladder.
After I had risen some seventeen feet I realized I’d made a great mistake. The rigging stood in sets, each going to a different level of the mast. I could have taken one that stretched directly to the top. Instead, I had chosen a line which went only to the first trestletree, to the top of the lower mast.
For a moment I considered backing down and starting afresh. I stole a quick glance below. The crew’s faces were turned up toward me. I understood that they would take the smallest movement down as retreat. I had to continue.
And so I did.
Now I was climbing inside the lank gray-white sails, ascending, as it were, into a bank of dead clouds.
Beyond the sails lay the sea, slate-gray and ever rolling. Though the water looked calm, I could feel the slow pitch and roll it caused in the ship. I realized suddenly how much harder this climb would be if the wind were blowing and we were well underway. The mere thought made the palms of my hands grow damp.
Up I continued till I reached the main yard. Here I snatched another glance at the sea, and was startled to see how much bigger it had grown. Indeed, the more I saw of it the more there was. In contrast, the Seahawk struck me as having suddenly grown smaller. The more I saw of her, the less she was!
I glanced aloft. To climb higher I now had to edge myself out upon the trestletree and then once again move up the next set of ratlines as I’d done before. But at twice the height!
Wrapping one arm around the mast—even up here it was too big to reach around completely—I grasped one of the stays and edged out. At the same moment the ship dipped, the world seemed to twist and tilt down. My stomach lurched. My heart pounded. My head swam. In spite of myself I closed my eyes. I all but slipped, saving myself only by a sudden grasp of a line before the ship yawed the opposite way. I felt sicker yet. With ever-waning strength I clung on for dearest life. Now the full folly of what I was attempting burst upon me with grotesque reality. It had been not only stupid, but suicidal. I would never come down alive!
And yet I had to climb. This was my restitution.
When the ship was steady again, I grasped the furthest rigging, first with one hand, then the other, and dragged myself higher. I was heading for the topsail, fifteen feet further up.
Pressing myself as close as possible into the rigging, I continued to strain upward, squeezing the ropes so tightly my hands cramped. I even tried curling my toes about the ratlines.
At last I reached the topsail spar, but discovered it was impossible to rest there. The only place to pause was three times higher than the distance I’d just come, at the trestletree just below the topgallant spar.
By now every muscle in my body ached. My head felt light, my heart an anvil. My hands were on fire, the soles of my feet raw. Time and again I was forced to halt, pressing my face against the rigging with eyes closed. Then, in spite of what I’d been warned not to do, I opened them and peered down. The Seahawk was like a wooden toy. The sea looked greater still.