Fair held the breeze behind us- 'twas warm with lovers' prayers. We'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs. They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed, And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest. By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of cook, We asked no social questions-we pumped no hidden shame- No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, I left 'em all in couples akissing on the decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! . . . That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again peace. Ay, blow your shrieking sirens at the deaf, grey-bearded seas! Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's unrestAnd you aren't one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest! But when you're threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail, At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale, Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed, You'll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest. You'll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread; You'll hear the long-drawn thunder 'neath her leaping figurehead; While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine Hull down-hull down and under-she dwindles to a speck, Her crews are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make? You're manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming's sake? Well, tinker up your engines—you know your business bestShe's taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest! THE RHYME OF THE THREE CAPTAINS 1890 [This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious Paul Jones, an American pirate. It is founded on fact.] T THE close of a winter day, AT Their anchors down, by London town, the And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye, thereby, And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Black wall, And he was Chaplain of the Fleet-the bravest of them all. Their good guns guarded their great grey sides that were thirty foot in the sheer, When there came a certain trading brig with news of a priva teer. Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze, Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas. Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled, And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold. "I ha' paid Port dues for your Law," quoth he, "and where is the Law ye boast "If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast? "Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk, "We tack not now for a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk; “I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare "Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre. "There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore, "And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore. "He would not fly the Rovers' flag-the bloody or the black, "But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack. "He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew-he swore it was only a loan; "But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own. "He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line, "He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine. "He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas, "He has taken my grinning heathen gods—and what should he want o' these? "My foremast would not mend his boom, my deck-house patch his boats; "He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats. "I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside, "But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied. "Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm, "I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm; "I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw, "And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw; "I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rock ing dark, "I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark; "I had lapped him round with cocoa-husk, and drenched him with the oil, "And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil; "I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard in the mesh, "And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; "I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, "Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws. "He is lazar within and lime without; ye can nose him far enow, "For he carries the taint of a musky ship—the reek of the slaver's dhow." The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold, And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold, And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt: "Good Sir, we ha' dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth were cut. "Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus: "He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us. "We ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar-we know that his price is fair, "And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre. "And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you, "We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true." The skipper called to the tall taffrail:-"And what is that to me? "Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy three? "Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o' the Line? "He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as mine. "There is never a law on the Cocos Keys, to hold a white man in, |