Roses and banner on a thigh

The chronometer in the chart room has been running four minutes slow since Gibraltar, and Captain Vosper will not let the bosun touch it. He says a man who fiddles with the sea's clock ends up in the sea. So we eat our biscuits by the bell, the bell is wrong, and nobody says so. I think you'd like that. You always liked things that were wrong in a way people agreed to ignore.

Forty-one days out now. Two swallows came aboard off the Azores, worn thin, and sat on the windlass as though they'd paid for passage. Cook fed them crumbs and Pelham swore they were bad luck, but they stayed as far as the Cape Verdes. Then one morning they were gone and the rail was bare. I told myself they'd found the coast. I didn't believe it.

Pelham has a rose inked on his forearm that his mother paid for, and under it a banner he says is the only honest line of poetry he owns. I asked him what it meant. He said it meant the clock was lying to him and he had decided to believe the rose instead. I told him that was very unsound navigation, and he laughed so hard he had to sit down on the hatch.

We make Montevideo on Thursday if the glass holds. I'll post this there. Don't wait up for me, and don't let Mother sell the piano yet.

Love, Tom