Seven chakra symbols in rainbow colours

The galley on the Ellen Fry is smaller than the pantry at home, and the sea has a way of shifting every pan off its hook by midnight. Cook Halloran gave me the stores this trip, which means I answer for forty-one tins, nine sacks and whatever sugar goes missing when the mate is hungry. So I have started painting lids. Each one gets a ring of petals round the edge, like the bowls at Aunt Dorrie's. Violet for the oats, indigo for the dried peas, blue for the tea, green for the onions that keep, yellow for the mustard, orange for the currants, red for the salt, because salt is the thing a man reaches for in the dark.

Halloran laughed at first. Then Tobiah Lusk came aboard, nineteen and green as a bottle himself, and could not make out the chalk labels in the wet. He could tell colours, though. Last Thursday he fetched the red tin without a word, and the stew came out with the right bite for once.

I have one lid left to paint. I keep putting it off because the red is nearly gone and the salt tin has a dent I cannot knock out. Tomorrow we should raise the Humber, and I will have the brush out before the tide turns. Tell Mother the oats are violet, not purple, and she is not to argue about it.

Your loving sister, Maud