Two hummingbirds forming a heart with flourishes

The ink froze in the bottle last night, so forgive the smudge at the foot of this page. We are three weeks out of Kingston and the sea has stayed flat enough for me to copy Mr Okafor's letters fair. He writes to a widow in Bristol each fortnight and never posts one, so I keep the drafts in the oilcloth folder by my bunk. On Tuesday he gave me a pot of cochineal red and told me to use it for the flourishes only, the curls that lift off each word like smoke off a snuffed wick.

The two birds came aboard at Port Royal, tangled in a fishing net with their beaks locked through the mesh. The bosun thought they would die of it. When the cook cut them free they clung to each other on the rail by the lamp locker, wings spread like a pair of shutters, and at dusk they make a heart against the dark water. Mr Okafor sits with them at supper and says nothing, which is more than he manages with the officers.

Last night he asked me to read back the letter to Bristol. I got as far as the third line before he stopped me and asked whether a heart can be drawn with its own beak touching itself. I said I supposed it could, if the artist was patient. He laughed, a short sound, the first I have heard from him since Jamaica, and took the pen from my hand and drew a red line beneath his name that curled back on itself until it became a heart with no beginning.

We reach Liverpool on the ninth. The birds will be let go at the Mersey, and the letter will go to the post office on Lime Street. Write back and tell me what Mother says about the glove I sent. I have finished copying. The folder is on my knee as I write, and I have not decided whether to show him the heart he drew, or whether it is his to keep. Your loving sister, Agnes.