Pencil sketch of a compass rose with ripple lines and several birds in flight, a tattoo design shaded in black and grey.

Compass rose with birds in flight

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a compass rose with N, E, S and W and intercardinal labels, set within concentric ripple-like rings. Several birds fly across the design, with one larger bird in the upper right and smaller birds scattered around the lower left. The drawing uses soft graphite shading in black and grey on a pale background.

Geometric Compass Compass rose Bird Swallow Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down, love, the kettle's only just gone off, and I'll tell you about the night the canaries went up the shaft. You'll not hear it from the men at the club, they only remember the cage that rattled and the water that came after.

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Our Dai was the banksman then, the one who counted the tubs and sent the lads down at the half-hour. He kept a brass compass in his waistcoat that his mam had bought off a Cardiff barrow the year before the strike. He said a man could lose his way underground the same as on the hills, and a compass was the only thing down there that didn't care whose father was the overman.

The water in the low drift had been creeping up for a week. You could see it on the surface of the sump, small rings going out from every drip, like someone had dropped gravel into a bucket that never settled. The birds in their wicker cages on the landing sang louder every morning, and the old men said that was a bad sign. Then the gate on the fourth level swung open on its own, and the men began to run.

Dai stood at the cage with the last bird in his palm. Every man who came up that shaft says the same thing: he opened his fist, and the little yellow thing went straight up towards the daylight without once looking back. Dai took out his compass, watched the needle swing, and called the men out after it, north-east, the way the bird had gone.

Nobody died that night. Not one. He lived to be eighty-three and never once wound that compass again. It sat on the mantel face up, the needle still pointing at the door.