Wheel, full and by; but she 'll smell her road alone to-night. Sick she is and harbour-sick- oh, sick to clear the land! Roll down to Brest with the old Red Ensign over us Carry on and thrash her out with all she 'll stand! Well, ah, fare you well, and it's Ushant slams the door on us, Whirling like a windmill through the dirty scud to lee: From the tumbling water-rows, (Walk her down to Mother Carey!), Oh, we're bound for Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea! RHYME OF THE THREE SEALERS 1893 AWAY by the lands of the Japanee And ebb of Yokohama Bay Swigs chattering through the buoys, In Cisco's Dewdrop Dining Rooms They tell the tale anew Of a hidden sea and a hidden fight, When the Baltic ran from the Northern Light Now this is the Law of the Muscovite, that he proves with shot and steel, When you come by his isles in the Smoky Sea you must not take the seal, Where the grey sea goes nakedly between the weed-hung shelves, And the little blue fox he is bred for his skin and the seal they breed for themselves; For when the matkas1 seek the shore to drop their pups aland, The great man-seal haul out of the sea, aroaring, band by band. And when the first September gales have slaked their ruttingwrath, The great man-seal haul back to the sea and no man knows their path. Then dark they lie and stark they lie rookery, dune, and floe, And the Northern Lights come down o' nights to dance with the houseless snow; And God Who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe, He hears the cry of the little kit-fox and the wind along the snow. But since our women must walk gay and money buys their gear, The sealing-boats they filch that way at hazard year by year. English they be and Japanee that hang on the Brown Bear's flank, And some be Scot, but the worst of the lot, and the boldest thieves, be Yank! It was the sealer Northern Light, to the Smoky Seas she bore. With a stovepipe stuck from a starboard port and the Russian flag at her fore. 'She-seal. (Baltic, Stralsund, and Northern Light birds of a feather Slipping away to the Smoky Seas, three seal-thieves together!) And at last she came to a sandy cove and the Baltic lay therein, But her men were up with the herding seal to drive and club and skin. There were fifteen hundred skins abeach, cool pelt and proper fur, When the Northern Light drove into the bight and the seamist drove with her. The Baltic called her men and weighed she could not choose but run For a stovepipe seen through the closing mist, it shows like a four-inch gun (And loss it is that is sad as death to lose both trip and ship And lie for a rotting contraband on Vladivostock slip). She turned and dived in the sea-smother as a rabbit dives in the whins, And the Northern Light sent up her boats to steal the stolen skins. They had not brought a load to side or slid their hatches clear, When they were aware of a sloop-of-war, ghost white and very near. Her flag she showed, and her guns she showed - three of them, black, abeam, And a funnel white with the crusted salt, but never a show of steam. There was no time to man the brakes, they knocked the shackle free, And the Northern Light stood out again, goose-winged to open sea. (For life it is that is worse than death, by force of Russian law To work in the mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw.) They had not run a mile from shore behind they heard no shots When the skipper smote his hand on his thigh and threw her up in the wind: "Bluffed my name 's "You must set a thief to catch a thief and a thief has 66 caught us all! By every butt in Oregon and every spar in Maine, "The hand that spilled the wind from her sail was the hand of Reuben Paine! "He has rigged and trigged her with paint and spar, and, faith, he has faked her well "But I'd know the Stralsund's deckhouse yet from here to the booms o' Hell. “Oh, once we ha' met at Baltimore, and twice on Boston pier, "But the sickest day for you, Reuben Paine, was the day that you came here "The day that you came here, my lad, to scare us from our seal "With your funnel made o' your painted cloth, and your guns o' rotten deal! 66 Ring and blow for the Baltic now, and head her back to the bay, "And we'll come into the game again to play!" with a double deck They rang and blew the sealers' call the poaching cry of the sea And they raised the Baltic out of the mist, and an angry ship was she. And blind they groped through the whirling white and blind to the bay again, Till they heard the creak of the Stralsund's boom and the clank of her mooring chain. They laid them down by bitt and boat, their pistols in their belts, And: "Will you fight for it, Reuben Paine, or will you share the pelts?" A dog-toothed laugh laughed Reuben Paine, and bared his flenching-knife. "Yea, skin for skin, and all that he hath a man will give for his life; But I've six thousand skins below, and Yeddo Port to see, And there's never a law of God or man runs north of FiftyThree: So go in peace to the naked seas with empty holds to fill, And I'll be good to your seal this catch, as many as I shall kill!" Answered the snap of a closing lock—the jar of a gun-butt slid, But the tender fog shut fold on fold to hide the wrong they did. The weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak, As the flame-spurts pale ran down the rail and the sealing-rifles spoke. The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free (Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!), The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue, But three were down on the Baltic's deck and two of the Stralsund's crew. An arm's length out and overside the banked fog held them bound, But, as they heard or groan or word, they fired at the sound. For one cried out on the Name of God, and one to have him cease, And the questing volley found them both and bade them hold their peace. And one called out on a heathen joss and one on the Virgin's Name, |