Wanderlust script and compass on feet

The compass came off the Halcyon Rose in Valparaíso, wrapped in a stocking, and the purser swore it had belonged to a man who drowned off the Horn. I keep it on the windowsill now, beside the tin of Assam you sent. The needle does what they all do: trembles, settles, then points at the harbour wall as though it had something to say about the weather. I tap the glass and it does not care.

Mr Ashdown says a clerk should not get sentimental about instruments. He has been at sea thirty-one years and keeps his charts in a leather folio with his initials stamped on the cover, so I have stopped asking him anything important. Instead I count. Forty-two crates of tinned peaches. Eleven sailors who will not look at the sea. One parrot who says "wanderlust" in your voice, which I never taught it, and which has frightened the cook half to death.

We sail for Lima on Thursday's tide. I have not yet told the captain I am staying behind. I have written that letter three times, and each time it came out sounding like a man asking permission to be ordinary.

So I am sending you the compass, or the idea of it. Take the stocking off the glass. Hold it flat on the kitchen table, turn it until the N lines up with the window, and you will see the needle shiver toward the door of the room where I used to sleep. It is not a fault. Some of us were only built to point at the place we left.

Yours, as the ink allows, Tom