Today was my 86th day learning to write a ship's log.
This morning I had biscuits with O oatmeal, at noon it was canned meat with mushroom O fish soup, and in the evening we had OO fish slices with fried bananas.
I gambled on cards with the sailors and lost 24,000 to little Jack—booked it.
The Captain wasn't feeling well today, either. I was to inspect on his behalf later.
Deep held his breath, concentrated, and grasped the pen tightly as he wrote in the log. When he finally wrote down the last word, he let out a big breath.
Though the scribbles in the notebook were crooked, with words of varying sizes, to Deep, who never went to school, being able to do even this was already quite an accomplishment.
"Writing is really hard, much harder than exploring islands."
Deep, done with his reflections, locked the notebook, which looked quite like Charles's, in the cabinet.
He passed by the card-playing sailors, onto the narrow corridor, beginning his daily ship inspection.
