The Princess Bride by William Goldman Page B

something at the top—a giant rock, a towering tree, something.
    “Fast now,” the Sicilian ordered. “If he is following us, which of course is not within the realm of human experience, but if he is, we’ve got to reach the top and cut the rope off before he can climb up after us.”
    “Climb?” Buttercup said. “I would never be able to—”
    “Hush!” the Sicilian ordered her. “Get ready!” he ordered the Spaniard. “Sink it,” he ordered the Turk.
    And then everyone got busy. The Spaniard took a rope, tied Buttercup’s hands and feet. The Turk raised a great leg and stomped down at the center of the boat, which gave way immediately and began to sink. Then the Turk went to the rope and took it in his hands.
    “Load me,” the Turk said.
    The Spaniard lifted Buttercup and draped her body around the Turk’s shoulders. Then he tied himself to the Turk’s waist. Then the Sicilian hopped, clung to the Turk’s neck.
    “All aboard,” the Sicilian said. (This was before trains, but the expression comes originally from carpenters loading lumber, and this was well after carpenters.)
    With that the Turk began to climb. It was at least a thousand feet and he was carrying the three, but he was not worried. When it came to power, nothing worried him. When it came to reading, he got knots in the middle of his stomach, and when it came to writing, he broke out in a cold sweat, and when addition was mentioned or, worse, long division, he always changed the subject right away.
    But strength had never been his enemy. He could take the kick of a horse on his chest and not fall backward. He could take a hundred-pound flour sack between his legs and scissor it open without thinking. He had once held an elephant aloft using only the muscles in his back.
    But his real might lay in his arms. There had never, not in a thousand years, been arms to match Fezzik’s. (For that was his name.) The arms were not only Gargantuan and totally obedient and surprisingly quick, but they were also, and this is why he never worried, tireless. If you gave him an ax and told him to chop down a forest, his legs might give out from having to support so much weight for so long, or the ax might shatter from the punishment of killing so many trees, but Fezzik’s arms would be as fresh tomorrow as today.
    And so, even with the Sicilian on his neck and the Princess around his shoulders and the Spaniard at his waist, Fezzik did not feel in the least bit put upon. He was actually quite happy, because it was only when he was requested to use his might that he felt he wasn’t a bother to everybody.
    Up he climbed, arm over arm, arm over arm, two hundred feet now above the water, eight hundred feet now to go.
    More than any of them, the Sicilian was afraid of heights. All of his nightmares, and they were never far from him when he slept, dealt with falling. So this terrifying ascension was most difficult for him, perched as he was on the neck of the giant. Or should have been most difficult.
    But he would not allow it.
    From the beginning, when as a child he realized his humped body would never conquer worlds, he relied on his mind. He trained it, fought it, brought it to heel. So now, three hundred feet in the night and rising higher, while he should have been trembling, he was not.
    Instead he was thinking of the man in black.
    There was no way anyone could have been quick enough to follow them. And yet from some devil’s world that billowing black sail had appeared. How? How? The Sicilian flogged his mind to find an answer, but he found only failure. In wild frustration he took a deep breath and, in spite of his terrible fears, he looked back down toward the dark water.
    The man in black was still there, sailing like lightning toward the Cliffs. He could not have been more than a quarter-mile from them now.
    “Faster!” the Sicilian commanded.
    “I’m sorry,” the Turk answered meekly. “I thought I was going faster.”
    “Lazy, lazy,”