Vertical arrow tattoo on the ribs

The bread went green on the third day out of Falmouth, and Cook has been blaming the damp for a week, though it was the hold that did it. I have taken to baking before the watch changes, when the galley is still cold enough that the flour does not sweat. You would laugh to see me, elbows in the dough, muttering like Father at the stove.

Mr Pell, the bosun, came down yesterday with a fletcher's bundle wrapped in oilcloth. Two arrows in it, he said, from a bowyer in Lymington who owed his brother money. He wanted the feathers trimmed for the signal lamp, which I think was a lie, because nobody on this ship has ever aimed anything but a grudge. I sat with them by the coal range while the kettle went round, counting the barbs on the fletching, goose and then grey heron, and I thought about how Father used to sing the names of feathers when he bound them.

I have kept one. Do not tell Pell. It has a head like a spearpoint, a little banded collar on the shaft where the thread was wound, and a tail split into neat ribs. I hung it above the flour bin where the lamp catches it, and in the mornings, when the sea is grey and the biscuit tins rattle, it looks as though it is waiting for a wind that will carry it somewhere worth going.

Write back and tell me the apple trees are fruiting. I will bake you a loaf the moment we make port, if the ship does not rot first.

Your loving sister, Nell