Tribal swirl tattoo on the back of the neck

The rope came back from the Marigold on Tuesday with its ends singed and a bowline that nobody on board could account for. I untied it on the slip with my teeth cold and the tide creeping over the boards, and there in the hemp was a pattern no sailor I know would tie: a run of tight coils, each one folding back on itself like a fern unrolling, with thin spikes breaking off the curl where a seam should have been. Old Harrow swore it was the mate's doing. The mate swore it was the cook.

I took it home and laid it across the kitchen table under the lamp, and the girl next door, who has an eye for such things, traced it with a pencil and said it looked like weather seen from above. She is right, I think. The swirls are the eddies that form behind the breakwater on an ebb, and the spikes are the bits of driftwood that catch in them. I have been trying to splice a copy for three nights, and every time I reach the spike my fingers go wrong.

Here is the thing I want you to know. Yesterday I found the marlinspike Father left us, the one with the brass band worn to nothing, and I used it to open the last coil. Inside the core was a scrap of paper, folded tight, in a hand I did not recognise. It said only: Tie it the way the water moves, and it will hold. I laughed, then I did not. I am sending you the paper with this letter. Keep it dry.

Write back soon. The Marigold sails on the spring tide and I would like to know, before she goes, which of us was right about the knot.

Your brother, Ellis