The Winter Room Read online

  The waves were just cut off clean.

  What would cut them that way?

  Wind.

  The answer came with the sound—an almost quiet moan mixed with a sharp tinkling that he realized was the wind pushing water spray ahead of it in a kind of horizontal frothy rain.

  It was wind. A wild wind—a wind stronger than anything he’d ever seen or heard of, a wind without warning out of the northwest. For precious seconds he stood, the cut line of swells moving toward him, stood and stared in disbelief. It just couldn’t be wind. There were no clouds in the sky, no fronts coming, no signs of weather at all—yet it was there.

  Like a fool, he thought, I stand like a fool. It was a wind to take him, to kill the Frog and he had wasted time staring. He ran for the mast and released the jib halyard. The truth is that if such a wind hit the Frog with her sails up for whatever reason, she would be driven over and down and sunk in seconds.

  The sound was louder now—a hissing moan that had an almost evil resonance to it—but he didn’t waste time studying it. He clawed the jib down, wadded it in a ball and—with it still hooked to the forestay—he opened the forward hatch and jammed all of the sail he could into the opening. He pushed the hatch back down. It would not latch, but it would have to do.

  No time now. Just seconds. He could smell the spray, salt moistness, being driven ahead of the storm—it must be a storm. Some freak storm. He jumped back to the mast and untied the mainsail halyard. Normally the sail would drop of its own weight, but now the wind was getting stronger—he sensed-heard the scream of it, his hair was plastered and blown over his face—and the main stayed up, held now by the pressure of the wind.

  He swore, grabbed at the sail and started to rip it down. Everything was noise—the wailing of a thousand screaming throats in the wind, the slapping of the sail sounding like a cannon. He felt one of his fingernails give on a seam. He kept tearing the sail down.

  The top of the hatch! He had to get the cabin top hatch open. He moved along the boom, still pulling at the main, fighting to hold himself upright in the wind, and kicked the sliding cabin top forward. The kick made him stumble, and the wind picked him up almost bodily and threw him out, away from the boat, but he tangled in the safety lifeline, caught himself and pulled back up to the cabin top.

  The mainsail was slashing back and forth like a demon gone mad. He couldn’t control it. Frantically he attacked, pushing part of it down into the cabin through the open top hatch only to have the wind sweep it out while he was gathering more of the billowing insanity to push down again.

  It was too late. There was a momentary—part of a second—hitch in the roar of the wind, a tiny hesitation and the full force of the storm hit the Frog like a giant sledgehammer. David had a fraction of time to disbelieve the wind—so strong it sucked his eyelids away from his eyes and pushed the Frog sideways, scudding like a leaf—then he tried to lean forward for the hatch opening just as the spruce boom, fifty pounds of laminated wood and metal rail still attached to the mainsail, caught a corner of the storm and slammed across the boat like a sweeping saber.

  It caught him full on in the center of the top of his head with a crack that sounded like the boom had broken.

  There was an immense, staggering flash of white-red color somewhere in the middle of him—with an exploding pain that covered the whole top of his brain like a burning glove—and he knew, as he fell down and forward into the top of the open cabin hatch, he knew it was too late.

  Excerpt copyright © 1989 by Gary Paulsen.

  Text copyright © 1989 by Gary Paulsen. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, APPLE PAPERBACKS, AFTER WORDS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. ORCHARD BOOKS and design are registered trademarks of Watts Publishing, Ltd., used under license.

  This book was originally published in hardcover by Orchard Books in 1989.

  This edition first printing, January 2009

  Cover art by Larry Rostant

  Cover design by Tim Hall

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-74829-2

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.