Egayov

   Boy, is it windy. The box boat I've hitched a ride on is coping well due to its enormous dimensions, but those waves look pretty boisterous, and would probably swallow a house without stopping. Every now and then, one of them notices us and turns angrily in our direction, to end its short life as a rather fetching fountain of saline spray, leaping over the rails of the port bow. I'm allowed to sleep in a spare cabin, which beats the traditional lifeboat stowaway paradigm I guess; but it's not exactly the Ritz.

   Since my last entry, I have: worked as a logger; been wrongfully arrested for loitering within tent (it was a wigwam); designed a new kind of water stilts; diverted a stream in order to investigate a cave that turned out to be the disused secret base of a supervillain; eaten Ngapi-Jaw (this involves seafood stir-fried in spices and is actually rather good); and watched a number of pleasant sunsets over the Gulf of Boni. Although I had some difficulty explaining how I had materialised in the nearby forest and almost destroyed one of the smaller trees in the process, the kind folk of Watubangga seem to have accepted my presence with very little scepticism, and have done a lot to help me (in return for keeping my car as a souvenir).

   I was very lucky to get aboard this freighter: I narrowly escaped capture by the local gangster, a tall youth of some sixteen summers who thinks he's hard. In fact he doesn't look local, and I suspect he's from the Epsilon nebula region, in disguise like me. It's a good job he didn't reach me before I got on the boat because I would have been forced to kill him, which would have been somewhat poor payment for his earlier hospitality (which had been very warm up until the point when he realised that I was never going to like Chas 'n' Dave as much as he evidently - and bewilderingly - did). No matter - it's all behind me now.

   We're due back in blighted Blighty in a week or two, so I'll update you then (or sooner if anything interesting happens, which seems unlikely in such a predicament). In the mean time, I'm going to be studying my calculus carefully to avoid any more silly mistakes.