Compass and anchor sleeve with blue splashes

Uncle Ted doesn't shout. He lays the brass compass rose from the Dutch hulk over the stain, centres it with his thumb, and tells you the sea has never once respected a straight line, so why should the paper. He hands you a fine nib and tells you to draw the splash as a tide set, letting it spread where the water would, then to ink the depth figures back over it so the fishermen can still find the sandbank off Hoo. You work until the lamp smokes and needs trimming. The race card he tucks under your elbow belongs to a dinghy he sailed as a boy, the one he named champion because it was the only thing in the harbour that got him home in a blow. He says it was never about winning.

The finished chart goes to the lifeboat station in a tin tube. The stain has become an island of bright blue with a small anchor marked on its western shore, and Ted pins a copy above the till where customers can see it. You still cannot tell whose mistake it was, yours or the ink's. Every morning he walks past it, sets the brass rose on the counter, and turns the needle until it points at the blue.