Fine line black tattoo of the Roman numerals VII and VIII with outlined triangles on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Roman numerals VII and VIII with triangles

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small tattoo on the inner forearm near the wrist, showing the Roman numerals VII and VIII in solid black lettering. Each numeral sits beside a filled black triangle, with thin, sketchy outlined triangles and a fine connecting line running beneath them. The ink is black only, set against pale skin with a soft, plain background.

Fine line Geometric Lettering Forearm Roman numeral Triangle Geometric shape Line Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Marigold's bell had cracked somewhere off Finisterre, and by the time we raised the Azores it rang in two voices, a clean note with a dead one underneath. Old Haddow said that was why we still kept the old hours. Seven bells, he told every new hand, was the half-hour nobody owned. Eight bells was the watch changing over, and that was the only half-hour anybody trusted.

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I had the middle watch that night with a Hull boy called Tomasz Lunn, who could not tie a bowline without swearing at it. We trimmed the lamp and kept an eye on the slate where the day's run was chalked. Off the port bow a small pale triangle kept showing and vanishing in the cloud, the sail of a smack or only a star working through the murk. Tomasz wanted to wake the captain. I told him to check the slate first.

Haddow had chalked the run in his square capitals, and beneath it, in the same hand, a line we had never seen him write: VII, then a wedge, then VIII. He had gone ashore at Ponta Delgada for the last time that afternoon, his papers signed, and left the slate behind as a joke that only we would read. Seven bells, eight bells. We stood there reading it while the cracked bell knocked against its clapper once more.

Tomasz rubbed the chalk with his thumb and the figures smeared. "What's the wedge for?" he asked. I looked at the light on the water, which had turned again into a triangle, and said the only thing Haddow would have said. "It's where the watch changes hands."