Tree and quote on the inner wrist

Forgive the smear on this page. We hit weather off the Azores on Tuesday and the galley shelf let go of the flour tin, so I have been wiping up for two days like a scullery girl in a convent. The ship's cat has taken to sleeping in the coal box, which is the only warm thing aboard. Cook says it is a sign and will not say of what.

Your Tom wrote to me, did you know? He sent it care of the chandler's and it reached me at Lisbon with a crayon drawing of the orchard folded inside. The old Bramley is in it, the one Father would never let anyone climb. Tom says he went up to see the world and got as far as the top branch before the wind took his cap. I laughed until the second mate asked what was wrong, and then I was not laughing at all, because I remembered the summer you and I went up together and sat so high we could see the church spire and the gasworks at once.

We are making for Valparaiso with a hold full of salt cod and nobody aboard who could name a single star. I told Cook about the orchard and he said a tree is only a tree until someone needs it to be something else. I have decided he is a fool. At dusk I stand at the rail by the galley door and count the lights of the fishing boats, and it strikes me that the world is only what you can climb high enough to see.

Tell Tom the view from the Bramley was never the point. The point was getting back down for supper.

Your loving sister, Ada