Mermaid and anchor on a thigh

The ship has not seen land for nineteen days, and the cook has started counting the biscuits in the tin twice a day, as if they might multiply when nobody is looking. I keep thinking of the harbour wall at Scarrow, and the way you stood on it with your hair down, waving that handkerchief like a flag of surrender. Tell your mother I have not forgotten the wager. She still owes me a pot of blackberry jam, and I intend to collect.

Yesterday the lookout called down that there were birds to the south-west, a small flock wheeling low over the water. Mr Pell said birds meant land within a day, and we all went up on deck to look. There was nothing but grey swell and a sky the colour of wet slate. The birds turned off and were gone. Pell went below without a word, and I stayed at the rail a long while, watching the waves roll under us the way they roll under a cloth being shaken out.

I saw something else out there, Ada, and I am not sure I should write it down. Just before dark a shape broke the surface off the bow, pale and long, and it sat up on a swell as if it were resting on a rock, combing its hair with its fingers. Then the light went and so did it. Pell says sailors see things after too many days without sleep. Perhaps. I have decided to believe the sea keeps its own company and does not mind if we watch.

If the wind holds we should raise the headland by Thursday. Save me a seat by the fire and a slice of that jam, and do not let your mother cheat me out of the pot.

Yours across every wave, Tom