Sunflower with swirls on the lower back

We lost the last of the fresh water off the Azores and I have not written since, so forgive the state of this paper. Mr Tolley has kept his promise about the seed. The tin rides in the lazarette under the spare sails, wrapped in oilcloth, and every morning I go down and check it like a man checking a sleeping dog. The seeds are black and striped like a badger's face. He says the heads grow taller than a man and turn all day to follow the sun, so that by evening they have their faces set west, toward the sea they cannot see.

Something about that has got under my skin. On the long watch last night I thought of Mother in the back garden with her sleeves rolled, bent over the bean rows, and how she never once looked up to see who was coming down the lane. Make of that what you like. The second mate says we are two weeks from Lisbon if the wind holds, and the wind has held for nine days, which is the kind of luck that makes the old hands spit over the rail.

Last Sunday Mr Tolley let me break the seal. I pressed one seed into a biscuit tin of wet soil and set it on the poop deck where the morning sun comes first over the water. Cook says it is a fool's errand in salt air. The men have taken to visiting it before their breakfast, the way you would visit a sick cousin.

This morning it had two leaves the size of my thumbnail, and both were already leaning east, toward the light coming up out of the sea. I did not tell anyone. I simply sat beside it until the bell rang, watching it lean into the light as if it had been waiting for someone to notice.

Your brother, Tom