We’d a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship,
We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip;
It’s a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored,
But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard.
Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains,
And the paint-work all was spatter-dashed with other people’s brains,
She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank,
And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank.
O! then it was (while standing by the taffrail on the poop)
We could hear the drowning folk lament the absent chicken-coop;
Then, having washed the blood away, we’d little else to do
Than to dance a quiet hornpipe as the old salts taught us to.
O! the fiddle on the fo’c’s’le, and the slapping naked soles,
And the genial ‘Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!’
With the silver seas around us and the pale moon overhead,
And the look-out not a-looking and his pipe-bowl glowing red.
Ah! the pig-tailed, quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played,
All have since been put a stop-to by the naughty Board of Trade;
The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest,
A little south the sunset in the Islands of the Blest.
LYRICS FROM ‘THE BUCCANEER’
I
We are far from sight of the harbour lights,
Of the sea-ports whence we came,
But the old sea calls and the cold wind bites,
And our hearts are turned to flame.
And merry and rich is the goodly gear
We’ll win upon the tossing sea,
A silken gown for my dainty dear,
And a gold doubloon for me.