Sect Year 4 · third month · day 9 · the Wide Sea, aboard the Carried Hour
Lin wrote the first figures of the crossing at dawn. He sat on the hatch cover with the tide-book open across his knee and the boatmaster’s glass lashed to the mast beside him. He wrote slowly, because his left hand had to be held down on the page to keep it still. The sea was grey and flat under a low sky. The wind came from the west, light and cold, and it smelled of nothing at all. He had learned on the first day that a sea which smelled of nothing meant the land was very far behind.
He had set the page out as Su set out a rations sheet. Each heading had its own column, the wind and the turn and the height of the water at the bell, and a rule was drawn beneath every total, and every total had been added twice. He had tried to do it on the first morning without a rule and found that the figures crawled across the page like flies on a wet wall. Now they stood in their columns, and he was almost pleased with them.
