Tiger head and blue orchids on upper back

The tiger's head came off the bench this morning looking more like a cat that had been told a secret. I had carved the brow from a single block of lime, and the stripes took me three weeks with the gouge, each one cut shallower than the last so the grain would not split. Mr Pryce from the Anchor Line wanted it finished in grey, the colour of a wet slate roof, but I told him a tiger that never saw sunlight would sulk all the way to Valparaiso.

So we compromised, which in this town means I did what I wanted and he paid me extra for the trouble. The whiskers are real horsehair, set one at a time. The eyes are the only part I painted in full colour, a pale blue-green like the ice in the harbour sluice at dawn, and I did them last with a sable brush so small my hand shook in the cold.

Beside the cheek I have set three orchids in blue lead, the kind the merchants used to bring up from the river barges in wicker baskets, and a single green curl above them for the wind that always comes off the bar at this time of year. Pryce asked why flowers on a fighting animal. I told him a tiger on its own is only a warning, but a tiger among flowers is something a sailor can look at for six months and still want to see again.

She sails on the evening tide. Walk down and see her if you can, and tell me whether the eyes have followed you along the quay.

Your loving brother, Tom