Compass with quote banners

The ferry from Stornoway was late again, so I sat on the quay with the gulls and read your last letter three times over. You asked whether I'd found the lighthouse keeper's cottage yet, and whether the Mackenzie boys still drink in the Crown on a Friday. The answer to both is yes, though I've stopped going in for the second.

I bought a brass compass from the chandler on Tuesday, the sort with a hinged lid and a needle that swings before it settles. He said it had belonged to a skipper who went down off Rona in the big blow of fifty-one, and that the needle had never quite trusted the north since. I told him I'd take it anyway. Father always said a man should know where he's come from before he fusses over where he's going, and I've been turning that over the way you'd turn a stone in your pocket.

This morning the boats went out without me. The skipper's son, young Calum, asked me straight across the slip which way I meant to sail, and I opened my mouth and nothing came out but salt. So I've come up to the hill above the harbour to write this, with the wind pulling at the pages and the compass open on my knee. The needle wobbles, then points to the far headland, then wobbles again.

I think I'll go back to the Crown on Friday after all. I'll tell Calum I'm sorry about the business with his net. Then maybe I'll ask him to take me out past the skerries, to see the place where the old skipper went under. Write back soon, and tell me which way the wind is blowing where you are.

Your brother, Alasdair