(Tom) “And our wives and sweethearts dear,
May not see for more’n a year.”
(Sailors) “Fair winds! White sails flowing free,
Blue water ’neath our keel,—
That’s the life for me!”
[TOM GREEN’S CHANTY]
Tom.
We have left our hap-py home,
On the o-cean for to roam.
Refrain.
Sailors.
Yeo-ho! A-way we go!
Round the world and back a-gain,
Yeo, heave ho!
Tom.
And our wives and sweet-hearts dear
May not see for more’n a year.
Sailors.
Fair winds, white sails flow-ing free,
Blue wa-ter ’neath our keel,
That’s the life for me!
The Princess laughed with her eyes at the Others, while she held the last long note until it seemed to die away in the woods, and they laughed back, but they didn’t speak, and she went on, quite seriously:—
“I give you only one verse of it, but there were ninety-three, and it told all about their life on the ocean wave and what they wanted to do, and Tom Green made most of it up as he went along,—so perhaps he worked as hard as any of them!
“Now, every time when they sung the refrain, the sailors all pulled together on the ropes, and little by little—inch by inch, almost—the great long mainmast rose in the air. And on all the other ships the sailors stood watching, because they had nothing else to do, and they all joined in the chanty, and the sound of it mounted up through the clouds. There never was a chanty like it since the world began!