Speaking Tube Confessions

Tuesday. Close one. The captain heard me down the speaking tube again tonight.

I keep it short. I keep it low. I never tell them the answer, because a crew that is handed the answer has not escaped, it has been delivered. I just nudge. Have another look. Talk to each other. Not that one, the other one. That sort of thing.

He has decided it is a ghost. I have decided to let him. A captain with a ghost to worry about has less time to wonder where his first mate goes at night.

Tonight one of the prisoners could not hear the tube at all, being hard of hearing, so her crew passed my words along to her, and she passed back the cleverest idea of the evening. That is the thing about a good crew. Nobody needs every part, so long as somebody has it.

Oiled a hinge afterwards so I had a reason to look busy. Best-oiled hinge on the ocean.