Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull-faced woman in a peaked military cap with an eagle insignia, with a hand at the chin, on the upper arm.

Skull-faced woman in peaked cap on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's face is partly shown as a skull, wearing a peaked military-style cap with an eagle insignia and the word Swallow across the top. A hand rises to the chin on the lower left, and the word BITCH is lettered in block capitals along the bottom. The shading is smooth and detailed, using only black ink and greys, with highlights giving the face and cap depth on the upper arm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Swallow came into Carrick Sound on the last tide of October with her sails in rags and no lamp lit at her bow. Mairi Tennant watched from the lighthouse gallery and counted the figures on deck, as she had counted every autumn since her father took the post. There were always nine. The tenth stood at the wheel with his cap pulled low, and he never turned his face towards the shore.

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The island folk said the Swallow had gone down on Skerry Rock in the gale of 1871, every soul aboard lost, the master's body never found. Her father had kept the ledger that recorded the wreck, and the page still listed nine names in the old keeper's hand. Mairi had read it so often that the ink had faded to the colour of weak tea. Nobody had ever written the tenth name because nobody knew it.

This year she rowed out before the ebb with a lantern and a tin of tar. The deck smelt of salt and rot. The man at the wheel lifted one bony hand to his jaw, as if he meant to speak, but the jaw would not move. Above the peak of his cap a tarnished bird hung on a brass badge, its wings spread the way a swallow's are when it dives for flies over the water.

She went below and found the master's logbook dry under a loose board. The last entry was blank except for a single line: Name the tenth. Mairi took the pen from her coat, wrote the name the captain had been trying to say all these years, and blotted it with her sleeve. At first light the Swallow slipped past Skerry Rock with all her canvas drawing clean, and the cap lay folded on the wheel, its badge turned towards the sea.

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