Bible verse script across a palm

The ink on my palm has nearly gone now. You wrote the verse there with your good pen the morning we sailed, and I kept my hand shut all the way past the Dogger Bank so the salt would not take it. Mr Pascoe the bosun laughed at me for it, but on the third night a squall came over the bow and I held the rail in both fists until dawn. When I opened them at last the words were smudged but still there, Is. 49:16 in your slanting hand.

We are twenty-three days out from Valparaiso with a hold full of nitrate and a cook who cannot make bread. The captain reads the Bible on Sundays and I have started to listen properly, which he says is the first sign of a sick mind. I think he is wrong. Every night I hold my palm up to the lantern and read the line again, and the words make more sense the further we get from home. You had written it so carefully, like a man engraving a copper plate. I did not understand, when you pressed the pen into my skin, that it was a promise and not a verse.

Write back to the Whitby address, not the post office, because they keep letters for ships that have been lost. I want to think of the kitchen with the blue dresser and Father's chair, and I want you to write the line again so I can copy it onto my hand before we round the Horn.

Your loving brother, Will