Winged scarab beetle with eye and sun on forearm

The wind has dropped for the third day running, so the crew are sitting about the foredeck mending everything they own, and I have the spare sail-needle and a stub of pencil and nothing better to do than tell you about the scarab. You will remember the little box Father brought back from Alexandria, the one with the lid that never shut properly. Mr Pellow, our purser, bought it off a dealer in the bazaar, and when we were four days out from Port Said he swore on his mother's grave that the beetle inside had been carved to keep sailors from drowning. I told him that was the sort of thing a man says to sell brass.

Still, I have kept it on my bunk. Each night when the lamp swings I look at the beetle, its wings folded out like a pair of sails, and above it the eye with its rays fanning up, as if somebody were keeping watch over the whole ship from a high window. Under the beetle there is a sun, dotted all over with tiny holes like pepper on a plate. I counted them once and gave up at two hundred.

The Bosun says the eye is the surest sign of a dishonest cargo, and that we ought to tip the box over the side. I have not done it. Yesterday the fog came down so thick we could not see the bowsprit, and the lookout called out that he could see a light low in the water. It was only the sun showing through the murk, a flat round thing that did not seem to belong to the sky at all. I thought of the beetle then, took the lid off the box and said a few words to it, feeling a fool.

We make Tilbury by the first of the month, God willing. Save me a seat at the table, and tell Mother I have not forgotten the tea.

Your loving brother, Tom