‘Well,’ answered Robin—‘well, and how?’
The smiling chemist tapped his brow.
‘Rob,’ he replied, ‘this throbbing brain
Still worked and hankered after gain.
By day and night, to work my will,
It pounded like a powder mill;
And marking how the world went round
A theory of theft it found.
Here is the key to right and wrong:
Steal little, but steal all day long;
And this invaluable plan
Marks what is called the Honest Man.
When first I served with Doctor Pill,
My hand was ever in the till.
Now that I am myself a master,
My gains come softer still and faster.
As thus: on Wednesday, a maid
Came to me in the way of trade.
Her mother, an old farmer’s wife,
Required a drug to save her life.
‘At once, my dear, at once,’ I said,
Patted the child upon the head,
Bade her be still a loving daughter,
And filled the bottle up with water.’
‘Well, and the mother?’ Robin cried.
‘O she!’ said Ben—‘I think she died.’
‘Battle and blood, death and disease,
Upon the tainted Tropic seas—
The attendant sharks that chew the cud—
The abhorred scuppers spouting blood—
The untended dead, the Tropic sun—
The thunder of the murderous gun—
The cut-throat crew—the Captain’s curse—
The tempest blustering worse and worse—
These have I known and these can stand,
But you—I settle out of hand!’
Out flashed the cutlass, down went Ben
Dead and rotten, there and then.