Now whether wench
Or a shuddering maid,
She dared the knife
And she took the blade.
By God! She was stuff for a plucky jade—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There were certain niceties of word adjustment to follow as for instance the substitution of “a thin dirk-slot” for “a dagger-slot,” the word “thin” carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy. The very acme of touches came in the punctuation† † Reproduced in [facsimile]. of the concluding lines—pauses that emphasize with so much ingenuity the very question that lends the speculatively mournful cadence to the whole:
Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife