Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Ornate pocket watch design with Roman numerals
Black and grey · Flash
A detailed pencil drawing of a pocket watch with a Roman numeral dial, hands and a crown at the top. The wide outer case is filled with engraved-style scrollwork, acanthus leaves and small flowers, shaded in fine hatched lines. The drawing sits on white paper on a wooden table, with a real pocket watch and chain out of focus in the top left corner.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
14th March, off the Azores, wind backing south-west.
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The watch came back to the galley this morning in the bottom of a flour sack, where Mr Hallam had hidden it before they lowered him over the side. I did not know he owned one. Forty years on the Corinna and he never once took it out at table. He would only stand by the stove with his thumb moving over the case, as if he were counting the scrolls on it.
It is heavier than it looks, the silver gone dull, every leaf of the outer case cut so the shadows sit deep in the grooves. The numerals are Roman, a fine affectation for a man who could not read a bill of lading without his spectacles. The XII is worn almost smooth where a thumb has rubbed it for years. The hands still point to a little after the hour, and I cannot bring myself to set them.
I have hung it on a nail above the range, beside the ladle and the tin of nutmeg. At six each morning I put the porridge on and look up. Mr Hallam used to say the galley was for the hands and the watch was for whoever was left to keep time. So I will keep the stove lit and the watch wound, and when we make Falmouth I will carry it to his sister in Penzance and ask her which hour he would have wanted it to show.
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