Verses 1889-1896

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 rocking 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 i’ 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,
But we do not steal the niggers’ meal, for that is a nigger’s sin.
Must he have his Law as a quid to chaw, or laid in brass on his wheel?
Does he steal with tears when he buccaneers?
‘Fore Gad, then, why does he steal?”
The skipper bit on a deep-sea word, and the word it was not sweet,
For he could see the Captains Three had signalled to the Fleet.
But three and two, in white and blue, the whimpering flags began: —
“We have heard a tale of a – foreign sail, but he is a merchantman.”
The skipper peered beneath his palm and swore by the Great Horn Spoon: —
“‘Fore Gad, the Chaplain of the Fleet would bless my picaroon!”
By two and three the flags blew free to lash the laughing air: —
“We have sold our spars to the merchantman – we know that his price is fair.”
The skipper winked his Western eye, and swore by a China storm: —
“They ha’ rigged him a Joseph’s jury-coat to keep his honour warm.”
The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,
The skipper spat in the empty hold and mourned for a wasted cord.
Masthead – masthead, the signal sped by the line o’ the British craft;
The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed: —
“It’s mainsail haul, my bully boys all – we’ll out to the seas again —
Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his grapnel-chain.
It’s fore-sheet free, with her head to the sea,
and the swing of the unbought brine —
We’ll make no sport in an English court till we come as a ship o’ the Line:
Till we come as a ship o’ the Line, my lads, of thirty foot in the sheer,
Lifting again from the outer main with news of a privateer;
Flying his pluck at our mizzen-truck for weft of Admiralty,
Heaving his head for our dipsey-lead in sign that we keep the sea.
Then fore-sheet home as she lifts to the foam – we stand on the outward tack,
We are paid in the coin of the white man’s trade —
the bezant is hard, ay, and black.
The frigate-bird shall carry my word to the Kling and the Orang-Laut
How a man may sail from a heathen coast to be robbed in a Christian port;
How a man may be robbed in Christian port while Three Great Captains there
Shall dip their flag to a slaver’s rag – to show that his trade is fair!”

THE BALLAD OF THE “CLAMPHERDOWN”

It was our war-ship Clampherdown
Would sweep the Channel clean,
Wherefore she kept her hatches close
When the merry Channel chops arose,
To save the bleached marine.

She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton,
And a great stern-gun beside;
They dipped their noses deep in the sea,
They racked their stays and stanchions free
In the wash of the wind-whipped tide.

It was our war-ship Clampherdown,
Fell in with a cruiser light
That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun
And a pair o’ heels wherewith to run
From the grip of a close-fought fight.

She opened fire at seven miles —
As ye shoot at a bobbing cork —
And once she fired and twice she fired,
Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired
That lolls upon the stalk.

“Captain, the bow-gun melts apace,
The deck-beams break below,
‘Twere well to rest for an hour or twain,
And botch the shattered plates again.”
And he answered, “Make it so.”

She opened fire within the mile —
As ye shoot at the flying duck —
And the great stern-gun shot fair and true,