Black fine line tattoo of an anchor entwined with an infinity symbol, with the script words refuse to sink written beneath it.

Anchor and infinity symbol with 'refuse to sink'

Fine line · Black and grey · Photo

A black tattoo shows an anchor whose rope wraps around the loop of an infinity symbol, with the script words refuse to sink written underneath. The linework is clean and of even weight, with no shading, and the tattoo sits on pale skin against a plain background. The composition is centred and fills most of the frame.

Fine line Lettering Anchor Infinity symbol Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last stopping train had already pulled away when Ada Pryce found the lost-property hatch shut and the porter gone home. She stood at the cold end of Platform Two with a canvas holdall at her feet and a sodden envelope in her hand. The ink had bled into a grey cloud, but the pencil underneath held: a tidal chart of the estuary, a loop drawn round the harbour mouth, and four words underlined twice in her father's cramped capitals. REFUSE TO SINK.

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Mr Ollerenshaw, the stationmaster, came out of his office with a mug of tea going cold in one hand and his keys in the other. He had known her father for thirty years, which meant he knew the story of the spring gale, the Mary Ellen dragging her anchor across the bar, and the chain the coastguard found still shackled to the bow. He looked at the envelope, then at her, and said nothing about the hour. He unlocked the hatch and let her sit on the bench behind the counter, where the lamp was warm.

Ada unfolded the chart under the lamp. The loop was not a loop once she traced it with her finger. It ran out past the bar, turned back on itself at the sandbank, and came round to the same mooring post again and again, like a figure eight lying on its side. Beside each tide time her father had drawn a small arrow, pointing the way the water would carry a boat that did not fight it.

At six she caught the first milk train north, the chart folded inside her coat. Past the junction the sun came up over the marsh, and she followed the estuary with her thumb on the cold glass, out to the bar and back again, the way he had taught her: never fight the set of the tide, only dig the anchor in well and wait for the turn.