THE MOTOR LAUNCH CREW
Crossing the harbor, four lads in a motor launch
Saw the invader host drop from the sky,
Saw a torpedo’s white wake through the water
Make for the stern of a vessel nearby.
“Jump!” cried the coxswain, “Here is my duty,
Here is the logic for which I was born,
One life asunder to stop the torpedo
Ere from their bodies a hundred are torn!”
“Nay,” cried the bowman. “We’re in this together.
Glory to God and such men as ye are!”
Seizing a boat hook he jumped to the gunwhale,
As mad as old Ahab, as fixed as a star.
Oh, the wild race in the harbor that morning!
Prayed to his Diesel the kid engineer,
“Fail me not now, O my beautiful engine!”
Swiftly the launch and torpedo drew near.
Wake upon wake, the two masses converging,
Never a word by the sternman was said.
Oh, there was death in the harbor that morning!
Under the keel the torpedo shaft fled.
Then with the force of a mighty harpooner,
Melville’s dread hero, such bowman was he,
Then from his arm the long boat hook went plunging
Faster than death and destruction could flee.
Into the blades of the whirling propeller,
Following after, the iron hook sank,
Changing the mark where the war head exploded,
Tumbling the rocks and a tree from the bank.
Then all around them the harbor was seething,
Concussion and fire and shouting and fear,
And they, too, are dead. Dead that motor launch coxswain,
That bowman, and sternman and kid engineer!