A SEA-GOING RUBAIYAT

A third one, who, instead of clothes,
Had hair on:

Said he: "You know you're both in wrong,
And now you've sung your little song,
I'll take you back where you belong,
I'm Charon."

But as they swam toward the boat,
A fourth appeared who got their "goat,"
No trousers wore he, nor a coat -

Nor had 'em:

"Good even'n, friends," said he in glee,
"Looks like you're off upon a spree,
I hope you've not forgotten me,
I'm Adam."

A flash then burst upon the scene,
A shape with teeth and fearsome mien,
Who, while he made the boat careen,
Cried "Steady!

"I am not dead, nor wish to die, You shall not let this thing get by Without my finger in the pie,

I'm Teddy!"

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Anonymous

A SEA-GOING RUBAIYAT

In eastern port, 'ere muezzin's call to prayer,
The Captain Omar, he of scatt’ring hair,

While the good ship at her moorings strains and stresses,

Calls the Black Gang and them thus addresses:

"Oh, greasy servants of the mighty genii Steam, To true believers like myself, unclean!

I, and me, myself, shall take thee home;

Be calm! Thou shalt not sleep beneath the foam!

"By Banka Strait, where buoys go astray,
And make the cautious captain lose his way,
Where wooded islands rise from out the deep,
I'm watchful still when other hombres sleep.

"Fear not the crashing seas nor surges' boom!
No rock shall ever enter engine room,
Tho' deep beneath the wave fear not thy fate
By Noah's method I will navigate.

"What if some liars say he drifted 'round
For forty days, then ran the ark aground-
Tho' Allah swore it, would I not believe!
One's never wrong if Sounding-lead he heave.

"In river, bay, in straits or open sea,

The sun may shine or not for all of me.

My mates take sight and when all three have done,

I take a sounding and ignore the sun.

"For modern methods care I not a whit -
My mates may tear their hair or throw a fit;
The Sounding-lead was Captain Noah's rule
And I'm of Noah's Navigation School.

WHAT HO! SHE BLOWS!

"So dive in bilge if so it be Thou must!
Pour on plunging rod and groaning thrust!
By the beard of Moses! thou art safe my mẹn -
For I, myself, will take thee home again..

"Keep but the fire of life within the boilers, My engineers, my wipers and my oilers,

And shining dollars shall be thy reward

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From the Protector of the Poor, my Shipping Board."

William Francis Roantree

WHAT HO! SHE BLOWS!

Yes, I am the bloke what shovelled the coke

On the whaler, Lally-ma-Loo;

And the gallant soul what scuttled the coal
Is the same that's talking to you.

We stud in the bight that starry night

A-tacking agin the gale

When the Capting shouts, "She spins, she spouts! Yo-ho and avast, the whale!”

(Of course, you know that the yell "Yo-ho!"
Should mean, "Slack stidder and cast!"
And you understand the simple command
When the Capting hollers, "Avast!")

So we on with our coats and we manned the boats
For the point where the whale she blew,
And we carried aboard a bundle o' cord,
A pearl-handled knife and a screw.

"O Capting Nye," I says, says I, "Now what are we going to do, In such a gale to murder a whale

With a pearl-handled knife and a screw?"

But the Capting's gaze was over the haze
And never a word spoke he,

And never a speech and never a screech,
And never a word to me.

Till he says and he said as he p'inted ahead,
Right straight at the monster's fin,

"His actions denote that his heart's in his throat, So jab him under the chin!"

So he held the screw

I'm a-tellin' you true

And he handed the knife to me;

And gripping the sheath in me wisdom teeth

I plumped straight into the sea.

Yes, out I clumb and over I swum

Right under the monster's fin,

Where I opens me knife, and regardless of life, I jabs him under the chin.

Then the whale piped high a leviathan cry

And he guggled in huge despair;

Then he splattered our sail and stud on his tail

And turned nine flips in the air.

"My eye, my eye!" says Capting Nye,

"I didn't expect that there,

That a full sized whale would stand on his tail

And turn nine flips in the air."

THE BEACH-COMBER

And he says, says he, "It appears to me,

That the animal must be vexed.

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there isn't no knowing

What he will be doing next."

So we switched our tack and we hurried back

To the jolly old Lally-ma-Loo,

Me holding the cord which we had aboard
And the Capting holding the screw.

And he says to me, "If a way there be

To murder a whale in a storm

It's to bandage his eyes and smother his cries With a bottle o' chloroform."

Wallace Irwin

THE BEACH-COMBER

I'd like to return to the world again,

To the dutiful, work-a-day world of men,
For I'm sick of the beach-comber's lazy lot,
Of the one volcano flaming hot,

With the snow 'round its edge and the fire in its throat,

And this tropical island that seems a-float

Like a world set in space all alone in the sea....
How I wish that a ship, it would stop for me.
I'm sick of the brown girl that loves me, I'm sick
Of the cocoanut groves, you can't take me too
quick

From this place, though it's rich in all nature can give...

For I want to return where it's harder to live,