Hibiscus and tribal swirls on a thigh

The Kestrel Mary put in at Apia on the Tuesday and we spent three days discharging copra, which is a poor way to see a fine harbour. Wally Hirst cut his palm on a hook the first morning and I had to hold the lamp while Doc Pritchard stitched it, so you will understand I've had little leisure for sightseeing. On the Thursday, though, a woman selling oranges off a barrow by the wharf gave me a hibiscus bloom for a shilling, and I've been carrying it in my shirt pocket like a fool ever since.

The flower is redder than anything in Hull, though it's already going soft at the edges. The long stamen bends over like a question nobody has answered. Mr Tuala, who keeps the ship's stores, says it opens for one day only, which is why the island girls wear them behind one ear. I told him at home we'd call that a waste of a good flower, and he laughed until he coughed up half a lung.

Out past the reef the swell rolls in long curling bands, black with deep water and then white where it lifts. The men on the forecastle say it's the same pattern all the way to Valparaiso. The chart-board in the saloon has stepped triangles along its border, the same as the sawtooth on your good linen tablecloth, and I caught myself tracing them with my finger while the cook shouted at me for dripping tea on the chart.

I'm pressing the flower between two pages of the Bible you gave me, so mind the Psalms if you open it. Tell Our Annie the wave out there never once stops to ask where it's going, and that I'll be home before it notices I've gone.

Your loving son, Tom