Compass rose on upper back

You will laugh, but Mr Hollis has finally let me engrave the compass rose on the Pelham chart, the one for the Baltic trade. Three weeks I have spent on the ruling alone. He stood at my shoulder every evening with his pipe gone cold, tapping the page where the points should fall, saying a rose is only honest if every ray is the length of a man's patience and no longer.

Yesterday the chart went down to the harbour office with my name in the corner, small as a flea, which is the custom for apprentices. I had hoped he would not notice that I had drawn the north point a hair off true. He noticed. He held the sheet to the window and said the needle at Hull had been wandering again, and that the sea does not care what the instrument says, so a careful man sets his north by the stars when he can and forgives the lodestone the rest of the time.

I have been thinking about that all night by the lamp. The ray I drew wrong is still wrong, but I have stopped minding it. Every point on that rose has a shaded half, the dark side the eye forgets, and he taught me to keep it dark on purpose so the light reads clean.

Tell Father the Baltic cargo sails Thursday. I will send a copy of the chart once I have one that is perfect, which may be never, and I find I am content with that.

Your brother, Tobias