The Low Lands! The Low Lands!
And she ploughed in the Low Lands, Low!”
Toe and heel and flat of foot begin to stamp the clay floor, and horny hands to slap patched knees in accompaniment.
“Oh! save me, lads!” he cried,
“I'm drifting with the current,
And I'm drifting with the tide!
And I'm sinking in the Low Lands, Low!
The Low Lands! The Low Lands!”—
The old bark kitchen is a-going now. Heels drumming on gin-cases under stools; hands, knuckles, pipe-bowls, and pannikins keeping time on the table.
And we sewed him in his hammock,
And we slipped him o'er the side,
And we sunk him in the Low Lands, Low!
The Low Lands! The Low Lands!
And we sunk him in the Low Lands, Low!
Old Boozer Smith—a dirty gin-sodden bundle of rags on the floor in the corner with its head on a candle box, and covered by a horse rug—old Boozer Smith is supposed to have been dead to the universe for hours past, but the chorus must have disturbed his torpor; for, with a suddenness and unexpectedness that makes the next man jump, there comes a bellow from under the horse rug:
Wot though!—I wear!—a rag!—ged coat!
I'll wear it like a man!
and ceases as suddenly as it commenced. He struggles to bring his ruined head and bloated face above the surface, glares round; then, no one questioning his manhood, he sinks back and dies to creation; and subsequent proceedings are only interrupted by a snore, as far as he is concerned.
Little Jimmy Nowlett, the bullock-driver, is inspired. “Go on, Jimmy! Give us a song!”
In the days when we were hard up
For want of wood and wire—
Jimmy always blunders; it should have been “food and fire”—
We used to tie our boots up
With lit—tle bits—er wire;