Winged bird tattoo on a shoulder

We are four weeks out of Valparaíso and the wind has not once given us a full day's rest. Yesterday, in the middle watch, a bird came down out of the murk and settled on the fore topgallant yard, wings held wide as if it were drying them. Grey it was, the colour of wet slate, with every flight feather fanned out and edged darker, like a little ship under full canvas. Mr Pellow says it is a stormy petrel and means nothing by it. The cook says it is a gull that has lost its way. I say it is the first thing aboard this barque that has looked at us without fear.

It stayed through the dog watch and into the morning. Nobody would touch it. Old Jory, who has sailed more years than he has teeth, climbed up with a biscuit and came down again saying it had looked at him like a magistrate. We named it Mercy, since it seemed the only thing on board keeping an eye on the weather for us.

On the third morning the wind dropped and the sea went flat as a plate. The bird lifted off the yard, circled the mainmast twice, and set its course north-east, straight as a rule. Captain Lusk ordered the helm after it, and at noon the lookout raised a line of cloud that was not cloud at all but the hills above Port Stanley.

I keep thinking of those wings held out against the sky, and how steady they were. When we are paid off in Bristol I mean to have one drawn on my shoulder by the man on Corn Street, grey, with the feathers shaded soft. You will say it is foolish. Tell me so when I am home, and I will show you where the bird left its mark.

Yours, with salt in every letter, Tom