Lavender sprig on an ankle

The lavender you pressed into my hand at Falmouth has lasted better than either of us expected. Three weeks out and the sachet still smells of your mother's linen cupboard, though the sprig itself has gone grey at the stalks. I keep it inside the lid of the medicine chest, where the chief steward swears the damp cannot reach.

The Marigold is making slow northing now, past the Azores, and the sea has turned the colour of pewter. Mr Pellow, who keeps the tallies and has no patience for anyone who doesn't, has taken to counting the biscuit tins aloud at dawn. Yesterday a flying fish landed on the galley step and Cook fed it back to the water with a ladle, telling it that it had come aboard looking for a berth it would not get. I laughed harder than was decent.

I have been thinking about what you said, that a man who sails for a living ought to carry something of the land with him. I thought you were being sentimental. Perhaps you were. But I took a cutting from the kitchen garden at Bodmin Row before we sailed, wrapped it in wet muslin and tucked it into my oilskin. It is rooting now in a jam jar on the cabin windowsill, and the mate says it is the first green thing he has seen in a month that did not want to be eaten.

Write when the mail boat meets us at Madeira. Tell me whether the bees have come back to the hive by the wall, and whether you finally fixed the gate.

Yours, Tom