Black and white line drawing of an hourglass with a beach scene inside the lower bulb and the words TIME OF YOUR LIFE on banners, shown on a starry black background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hourglass beach scene flash design

Black and grey · Flash

A black and white flash design of an hourglass with TIME OF YOUR LIFE written on banners at the top and bottom. The upper bulb holds a moon, clouds, a lightning bolt and birds, while the lower bulb shows a palm tree, a shark fin, a bottle and a skull wearing sunglasses on sand. The fine stippled and hatched linework sits on a dark background dotted with stars.

Hourglass Skull Palm tree Beach Bottle Sunglasses Cloud Lightning bolt Moon Bird Star Banner

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the sugar tin, lad, and don't you dare turn that glass before the bell," said old Tobias Renn, stirring the copper pot with a spoon as long as his forearm. "Forty years I've cooked aboard the Marigold Rose, and I've watched men wish the sand would hurry."

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That glass hung over the stove the year the purser Hobbs laughed at the weather. He said a sailor needed no sky to tell the hour, only a bottle of Jamaica rum and a shady spot on the sand. The gulls went quiet. Then the black cloud came up off the port bow, a bolt of lightning split the sea like a cracked plate, and every man aboard heard the fin slicing the swell beside us.

Hobbs took his rum below and fell asleep among the flour sacks. Young Ned, the cabin boy, went searching with a lantern and found only a pair of brass-rimmed sunglasses perched on a bleached skull by the rope locker, grinning up at the glass. Nobody ever learned whose skull it was. Ned swore it turned its face toward the stove when he spoke. The sand ran out of the top bulb that night faster than any watch I've known, and by dawn the sea lay flat as a dinner plate.

So when you hear men say time flies, remember the galley clock is a liar. Time runs whichever way it likes, and the only sensible thing a cook can do is keep a bottle back for the beach."