Crossed fingers hand on an upper arm

The cabin boy has taken to crossing his fingers every time the Captain says we'll raise the Azores by Thursday. I told him the sea does not care for bargains, and he told me that was exactly why a man needed his fingers crossed. I have been cook on the Marigold for eleven years and I have never once seen a biscuit weevil impressed by hope, so I suppose he has the better philosophy.

The galley is hot as a bread oven today. The pickled herring has gone over in the barrel and the last onions are sprouting green shoots like they're off to a christening. I dropped the rind of a Seville orange into the pot for the smell, which is the only fine thing I have left to put in it. Mr Hollis asked whether I could make the salt beef taste like Sunday, and I said I could make it taste like a promise. He did not thank me for that.

Here is the thing I meant to tell you before the wind turned. At Falmouth I traded three tins of our good tea to a chandler for a bottle of blue-black ink, the kind that dries darker than it goes on. In the back of my receipt book I have drawn a small hand with two fingers crossed, shaded in fine hatching the way my mother used to draw birds for the church bulletin. I am not sure what it promises. Perhaps only that I will be standing in your kitchen by spring, with the bread rising and no more Thursdays to lie about.

Keep the lamp lit for me. Tell the baker's boy to stop whistling under the window.

Yours in salt and flour, Tom