Be brave arrow design

The galley was the only dry room in the Harriet May, which was why the men crowded into it at every watch change, steam running down the portholes and their boots steaming on the grating. Tobias had come aboard at fourteen with a sack of his mother's pencils and nothing else. Mrs Pryce had taken one look at the pencils and set him to peeling potatoes, then to scratching the mess tins' names onto their rims so no one drank from the wrong one.

By the second night of the storm he had stopped being sick and started being useful. He carried the kettle along the rail. He held the lamp while the cook stitched a torn sail patch by feel. Between jobs, in the thin yellow light, he took a stub of lead from his apron and drew on the back of a flour tally: a shaft running straight, a head at the far end, two curled feathers at the tail, and a line of looping letters copied from the board above the stove.

Mrs Pryce saw it and said nothing. By morning the sea had flattened to grey. She pinned the tally above the bread oven, where the cook's boy would see it each time he reached for the peel, and tapped the word on the paper with one floury finger. 'Straight at the mark,' she said. 'That's all brave is, lad. Keep your nose to it and let the wind do the rest.'