And said: “ ’Fore I’ll be taken I’ll be damned if I don’t be drowned;
Yet if you will be plucky, men, and likewise well behaved,
We’ve got one chance in a thousand yet, but what we may be saved.
“About ten miles to leeward there lies the Guinea land,
And for fifty miles before it clear a narrow bar of sand;
And if we find a deepish place—as such of them there are—
It just is barely possible that we may clear the bar.”
Then we gave three cheers for our old man because we liked his dash,
And allowed ere we’d go to prison that we all would go to smash;
So then we set the wheel up with the steamer coming down,