I.
‘I was in a hooker once,’ said Karlssen,
‘And Bill, as was a seaman, died,
So we lashed him in an old tarpaulin
And tumbled him across the side;
And the fun of it was that all his gear was
Divided up among the crew
Before that blushing human error,
Our crawling little captain, knew.
‘On the passage home one morning
(As certain as I prays for grace)
There was old Bill’s shadder a-hauling
At the weather mizzen-topsail brace.
He was all grown green with sea-weed,
He was all lashed up and shored;
So I says to him, I says, “Why, Billy!
What’s a-bringin’ of you back aboard?”
’“I’m a-weary of them there mermaids,”
Says old Bill’s ghost to me;
“It ain’t no place for a Christian
Below there—under sea.
For it’s all blown sand and shipwrecks,
And old bones eaten bare,
And them cold fishy females
With long green weeds for hair.
’“And there ain’t no dances shuffled,
And no old yarns is spun,
And there ain’t no stars but starfish,
And never any moon or sun.
I heard your keel a-passing
And the running rattle of the brace,”
And he says, “Stand by,” says William,
“For a shift towards a better place.”
‘Well, he sogered about decks till sunrise,
When a rooster in the hen-coop crowed,
And as so much smoke he faded
And as so much smoke he goed;
And I’ve often wondered since, Jan,
How his old ghost stands to fare
Long o’ them cold fishy females
With long green weeds for hair.’
II.
Jake was a dirty Dago lad, an’ he gave the skipper chin,
An’ the skipper up an’ took him a crack with an iron belaying-pin
Which stiffened him out a rusty corp, as pretty as you could wish,
An’ then we shovelled him up in a sack an’ dumped him to the fish.
That was jest arter we’d got sail on her.
Josey slipped from the tops’l-yard an’ bust his bloody back
(Which corned from playing the giddy goat an’ leavin’ go the jack);
We lashed his chips in clouts of sail an’ ballasted him with stones,
‘The Lord hath taken away,’ we says, an’ we give him to Davy Jones.
An’ that was afore we were up with the Line.
Joe were chippin’ a rusty plate a-squattin’ upon the deck,
An’ all the watch he had the sun a-singein’ him on the neck,
An’ forrard he falls at last, he does, an’ he lets his mallet go,
Dead as a nail with a calenture, an’ that was the end of Joe.
An’ that was just afore we made the Plate.
All o’ the rest were sailor-men, an’ it come to rain an’ squall,
An’ then it was halliards, sheets, an ’tacks ‘clue up, an’ let go all.’
We snugged her down an’ hove her to, an’ the old contrairy cuss
Started a plate, an’ settled an’ sank, an’ that was the end of us.
We slopped around on coops an’ planks in the cold an’ in the dark,
An’ Bill were drowned, an’ Tom were ate by a swine of a cruel shark,
An’ a mail-boat reskied Harry an’ I (which comed of pious prayers),
Which brings me here a-kickin’ my heels in the port of Buenos Ayres.
I’m bound for home in the ‘Oronook,’ in a suit of looted duds,
A D.B.S. a-earnin’ a stake by helpin’ peelin’ spuds,
An’ if ever I fetch to Prince’s Stage an’ sets my feet ashore,
You bet your hide that there I stay, an’ follers the sea no more.