Large realistic black and brown chimpanzee tattoo covering the upper back, with arms raised and feet visible at the lower back.

Realistic chimpanzee across a back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large chimpanzee sits in a climbing pose across the whole of the upper and lower back, with arms raised to the shoulders and feet gripping at the bottom edge. The fur is rendered with fine, layered shading in black, brown and grey, and the face has detailed highlights around the brow and muzzle. Small coloured tattoos are visible at the edges of both upper arms, and the chimpanzee is centred on the frame with a plain wall behind.

Realism Back Monkey Fur

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Tobin brought the chimpanzee aboard at Freetown with a length of rope round its middle and a bunch of bananas tucked under his coat, and by the second night it had the galley running better than I did. I was cook on the Halcyon Rose, a collier out of Cardiff, and thirty years at the range had taught me to keep one hand on the kettle and the other on the rail. Jumbo, the crew called him, had no need of either. He went up the dresser shelves like a man climbing a ladder in his sleep, came down with a tin of peaches under one arm, and held out his free hand for his biscuit before I had turned round.

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The trouble came off Ushant in a November gale. The captain wanted him over the side at the next port, and Tobin said nothing, which was worse. Then the sea hit us broadside and every pan on the hooks rang like church bells. I was on my knees by the stove when I saw Jumbo go up the bulkhead, feet hooked into the iron stanchion, one arm braced against the beam and the other flung out to hold the lamp steady. He sat there with his jaw set and his brow drawn low, as though he were holding a heavy door shut against the weather, and not once did the flame gutter. We rode out the night on a pot of stew and a chimp's stubbornness.

At Falmouth the captain paid Tobin off and the boy went down the gangway with the rope still knotted at his waist. I stood at the galley hatch and did not wave. Jumbo stopped at the foot of the crane, turned, and looked back at the ship. Then he raised both arms to his shoulders, the way he had in the gale, and climbed out of sight. I have cooked for many men since, but I have never again kept a stove lit with so little fuss.