Читать книгу Little Ship of Fools. Sixteen Rowers, One Improbable Boat, Seven Tumultuous Weeks on the Atlantic онлайн

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I have Margaret to thank for my timely recovery. As the lot of us fussed around the marina on the morning of Sunday, January 10, addressing last-minute adjustments to the boat, stowing kit, gathering fresh fruit and snacks for the run down to Tarfaya, she said to me, “Charlie, I have a job for you.”

My truest ambition for the next few hours had been to curl up in my bunk aboard the boat and there to log three or four hours of much-needed sleep. I had slept very little the night before and had been up early that morning to help empty and clean the apartment. I raised my eyebrows, feigning receptivity to whatever was coming, and she said quite gaily, “I want you to take a taxi to Marjane and get us eight or ten more packages of prepared cereal for the boat.”

Marjane is a cavernous supermarket at the far end of the city, near the men’s apartment, where I had already been that morning on behalf of the boat and to which I had no intention of returning—especially in one of Agadir’s sooty little orange taxis. Not that I didn’t enjoy Marjane. I did. It was an entertainment unto itself: aisles heaped with groceries and Moroccan clothing, kids in little djellabas, women gliding mysteriously past the bully beef display in their floor-length wraps and head scarves. Scruffy little sparrows that had undoubtedly lived their entire lives in the store darted around, chirping and shitting among the bulk nuts and fruit.