Arrow with feather fletching on the side

You will think me soft for writing before I have unpacked the trunk, but the room at Mrs Pascoe's is cold and the sea comes up under the window like someone knocking to be let in. I have made a bargain with myself: one letter a week, whatever I have seen. This week I have seen a boy shoot an arrow off the end of the breakwater and watch it fall into the bay.

He is Tom Hosking, the landlady's nephew, and he fletches for the archery club on the green. Yesterday he showed me the work in his shed, bundles of goose quills soaking in a tin, and the little brass jig that holds each feather while the glue sets. He told me the vanes must be cut from the left wing for the arrow to spin true, and that every fletcher in Cornwall would argue with him about it. I did not argue. I wanted to hear him talk.

The arrow he lost was his best. It went out over the water in a long rising curve, and for a moment it hung there, feather first, like a bird that had forgotten how to land. Then it dropped. He did not swear. He only said, "Well, it wanted to go somewhere," and walked down the steps to the tideline with his sleeves rolled up.

I am writing this with the lamp lit and the window black. Tomorrow he says the tide will be low enough to find it. I hope it is in one piece. I think I would like to see him pull it from the sand.

Yours in haste, Margaret