FEVER-CHILLS
He tottered out of the alleyway with cheeks the colour of paste,
And shivered a spell and mopped his brow with a clout of cotton waste:
‘I’ve a lick of fever-chills,’ he said, ‘ ’n’ my inside it’s green,
But I’d be as right as rain,’ he said, ‘if I had some quinine,—
But there ain’t no quinine for us poor sailor-men.
‘But them there passengers,’ he said, ‘if they gets fever-chills,
There’s brimmin’ buckets o’ quinine for them, ’n’ bulgin’ crates o’ pills,
’N’ a doctor with Latin ’n’ drugs ’n’ all—enough to sink a town,
’N’ they lies quiet in their blushin’ bunks ’n’ mops their gruel down,—
But their ain’t none o’ them fine ways for us poor sailor-men.
‘But the Chief comes forrard ’n’ he says, says he, “I gives you a straight tip:
Come none o’ your Cape Horn fever lays aboard o’ this yer ship.
On wi’ your rags o’ duds, my son, ’n’ aft, ’n’ down the hole:
The best cure known for fever-chills is shovelling bloody coal.”
It’s hard, my son, that’s what it is, for us poor sailor-men.’
ONE OF THE BO’SUN’S YARNS
Loafin’ around in Sailor Town, a-bluin’ o’ my advance,
I met a derelict donkeyman who led me a merry dance,
Till he landed me ’n’ bleached me fair in the bar of a rum-saloon,
’N’ there he spun me a juice of a yarn to this-yer brand of tune.
‘It’s a solemn gospel, mate,’ he says, ‘but a man as ships aboard
A steamer-tramp, he gets his whack of the wonders of the Lord—
Such as roaches crawlin’ over his bunk, ’n’ snakes inside his bread,
And work by night and work by day enough to strike him dead.
‘But that there’s by the way,’ says he; ‘the yarn I’m goin’ to spin
Is about myself ’n’ the life I led in the last ship I was in,
The “Esmeralda,” casual tramp, from Hull towards the Hook,
Wi’ one o’ the brand o’ Cain for mate ’n’ a human mistake for cook.
‘We’d a week or so of dippin’ around in a wind from outer hell,
With a fathom or more of broken sea at large in the forrard well,
Till our boats were bashed and bust and broke and gone to Davy Jones,
’N’ then come white Atlantic fog as chilled us to the bones.
‘We slowed her down and started the horn and watch and watch about,
We froze the marrow in all our bones a-keepin’ a good look-out,
’N’ the ninth night out, in the middle watch, I woke from a pleasant dream,
With the smash of a steamer ramming our plates a point abaft the beam.