I envy the men who can dip and ride

And drown, if they will, in the brown, salt tide.

Oh, why is a half-grown lad so free

To pack up his clothes and put out to sea, While a maid must live out her life on shore Mending and washing and sweeping the floor?

Some moonless night, when the sky is black,
I'll run away and I'll never come back;
And maybe the girl who used to be me
Will be far away, like a lad, at sea!

Abigail Cresson

'MARINERS

Men who have loved the ships they took to sea, Loved the tall masts, the prows that creamed

with foam,

Have learned, deep in their hearts, how it might be
That there is yet a dearer thing than home.
The decks they walk, the rigging in the stars,
The clean boards counted in the watch they
keep,-

These, and the sunlight on the slippery spars,
Will haunt them ever, waking and asleep.

Ashore, these men are not as other men; They walk as strangers through the crowded street,

Or, brooding by their fires, they hear again

The drone astern, where gurgling waters meet,

SERVICE STRIPES

Or see again a wide and blue lagoon,

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And a lone ship that rides there with the moon. David Morton

SERVICE STRIPES

When she was new and splendid, all gleaming white and gold,

With millionaires upon her decks and baggage in her hold,

The fishing captains swore at her, the skippers of the tramps

Shook horny fists in passing and damned her glittering lamps;

"A bloomin' purse-proud autocrat," they called her in their wrath,

"That thinks she owns the right of way along the ocean path,"

And then - the war-clouds filled the sky, a vast and crimson blur,

And workmen took this lady fair and strangely altered her.

Her ports were sealed and painted and guns set fore and aft,

Her sides were wildly camouflaged with weird and cunning craft,

And in her sumptuous smoking-rooms and diningrooms de luxe

Which once had sheltered plutocrats and baronets and dukes,

The dusty brown of khaki cloth was all that met the gaze

The garb of grim adventurers who sought the conflict's blaze;

From upper deck to lower deck, from stem to throbbing stern

Were soldiers, soldiers khaki-clad wherever one might turn.

And now the war is over, she's white and gold again,

But captains of the dingy tramps and grizzled fishermen

Salute her as she races by: "The beauty!" so they

say,

"She sure has won her service stripes, so give her right of way!

A thoroughbred, that lady, and lookut how she runs, No wonder that she gave the laugh to all the bloomin' Huns!

The Liner she's a Lady, but a Lady true an' brave An' we drop our colors to her as she shoots along the wave!"

Berton Braley

THE DERELICT'S RETURN

Oh, blink, ye lights, from each familiar headland,
We're glad to make our homing in the dark:
Oh, blink, ye bonnie, bonnie lights of England,
Ye wot not of the number of our bark.

We're six years out, O Christ! we have a story; Our weed-grown sheathing wallows through the foam,

THE DERELICT'S RETURN

We're loaded deep with sin and memories gory, Oh, blink, ye bonnie lights and let us home.

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Our rudder's gone, our compass lies like Satan.
We sold our sails to cheat the winds of God,
We ran bare-poles through winds without abatin';
Our backs are raw beneath the iron rod.

We burned our boats to save our bones from freezing;

In Hell's own port we pawned our anchor chains. The very women shamed us with their teasing, And jeered to see our toiling in the rains.

We dealt in rotten gear and putrid rations;
Our masts and yards have long gone by the board,
We've kept afloat with "soul-an'-body lashin's,"
And trusting to the mercy of the Lord.

Our decks are rotting with the slime of ages,
We kept no reck'ning, and we laid no course;
Our log-book's filled with mildew and blank pages;
We drift beneath the ensign of remorse.

Oh, but we're water-logged and plague-infected,
The rats have left us, yet we do not sink.
If only we could get repairs effected,
There's time to prick a truer chart, we think.

Then blink in hope, ye lights from windy beacons, The chandlers' stores lie hard beneath our lee. While we can swim our courage never weakens, Oh, fit us out - and we will put to sea.

Lieut. John Anderson, R.N.R.

THE CHEER OF "THE TRENTON"

A Samoan Memory — 1889

An English opinion. — Consider the scene and the matchless heroism and generosity of this Yankee crew. Almost sure of instant death themselves, they could appreciate the Queen's ship fighting the hurricane and the gallantry of the effort, with the generosity of true mariners. We do not know in all naval records any sound which makes a finer music upon the ear than the cheer of the Trenton's men. It was distressed manhood greeting triumphant manhood, the doomed saluting the saved. It was pluckier and more human than any cry raised upon the deck of a victorious line-of-battle ship. It never can be forgotten, must never be forgotten, by Englishmen speaking of Americans. That dauntless cheer to the Calliope was the expression of immortal courage. London Telegraph.

Our anchors drag and our cables surge
At every shock of the hurtling sea,
While the mist of breakers veils the verge
Of the reef of coral under our lee.

From east by north to the north

north west

The wild typhoon veers sweep on sweep, And from moment to moment the cross-wave's

crest

Buries our waist in its sidelong leap.

Under the blows of our plunging screw
The whitening breakers foam and churn,
But for all that steam and steel can do

We are drifting slowly, astern, astern.