Compass rose on an upper arm

The chart room smelled of lamp oil and wet wool when I finished the copy of Master Halloran's coast, and I have been thinking since about the rose he drew in the corner of it. Eight points, fine as spider silk, with the little lilies at the tips he insisted on for the ships' pilots who could not read Latin. He made me ink the North arm in red so no captain could mistake which way was home. The rest he left black, as if the others could wait.

He is leaving Wexford on Thursday for his sister's house in Bristol, and he asked me to take the old brass dividers to the harbour office. I went instead to the quay where the Mary Ann was loading salt, because the bosun owes me a shilling and I wanted it before the tide turned. He was not there. A boy with ink on his cheek told me the bosun had sailed on the morning ebb with the surveyor's man, and that the surveyor's man had been looking for someone who could copy a sea chart in a hurry.

So I have the dividers, and the copy is finished, and I am sitting with the lamp turned low trying to decide whether a man who draws the whole wind and the whole coast should ever be asked to find his own way. I will bring the dividers Thursday. Tell Halloran the red N is smudged on the left stroke. He will know I did it on purpose.

Your friend, Daniel