"Bud Sparhawk - Primrose and Thorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sparhawk Bud)

The rest of her watch passed without incident as she tacked at a twenty degree angle to the head wind.
The new sails that they had deployed on day five were still serviceable and were probably good for
another two days at least. There was a minor fluctuation in the barometer and Louella let the keel down a
few hundred meters. She nearly fell asleep at one point, she was so tired.



Louella was the first to notice how their track was consistently deviating to the south. On the last two
tacks they had strayed nearly fifty kilometers west of plan.

"Unless there are some different physics out there we can't possibly be heading like the inertial shows,"
she remarked with a nod at the instrument when Pascal crawled up to relieve her.

Pascal looked at the readout. "This thing's supposed to be foolproof. Maybe you're misreading it?"

Louella snorted in reply. "You check it yourself. I'm getting something to eat and then some shut-eye."
She slid from the helmsman's perch, past Pascal, and into the stateroom. "See if you can figure out what's
wrong."

Pascal kept an eye on the inertial throughout his shift. Sure enough, the southern legs showed the same
deviation. If the machine was to be believed, then the winds were coming almost directly down from the
north instead of following the westerly course that they had been told to expect.

He wished that he was thinking a little more clearly. Something kept itching at the edges of thought.
Something someone had warned them about. What was it? He looked at the curving southerly trace that
the inertial was showing and wondered. It almost looked like a smooth curve. . .Then he had it! A
turbulence eddy must have formed along the edge. If the readout was right then they were already being
drawn into its grasp. "Louella!" he shouted, "wake up! We have a bit of a problem."



Hours later the winds rocked Thorn from side to side as Louella fought to make way. Unlike the smooth
air they had encountered thus far, the winds on the edges of the storm were rough, uneven gusts that
quartered with little warning. In one stomach-wrenching instance, Thorn had turned completely about,
while pitching nearly sixty degrees to leeward, reversing as the wind switched and slammed them in the
opposite direction.

She knew that they'd lost the foresail, and suspected that the aft was in tatters. There was no possibility
of hoisting new ones in these rough seas. Something in the sail locker had torn loose and was smashing
around. Pascal would be taking his life in his hands if he tried to go into the locker. For good or ill, they
had to use whatever sail they had and hope that their skill, and no small amount of luck, would see them
through.

"Can't even put out a damned sea anchor to steady her," she complained at one point. "How the hell do
the sailors up here survive these storms, anyhow?"

"I think they are wise enough not to do something stupid like racing in a small boat." Pascal said dryly
from the bunk where he had secured himself. "How are we doing?"