"Thou saw'st me, on that fearful day, When, fruitless all attempts to save, Our pinnace foundering in the bay, The boat's-crew met a watery grave,— All, all—save One—the ravenous sea That swallow'd all—rejected Me!
And now, when fifteen suns have each Fulfilled in turn its circling year, Thrown back again on England's beach, Our bark paid off—He drives me Here! I could not die in flood or fight— He drives me Here!!"— "And sarve you right!
"What! bilk your Commander!—desart—and then rob! And go scuttling a poor little Drummer-boy's nob! Why, my precious eyes! what a bloodthirsty swab!— There's old Davy Jones, Who cracks Sailors' bones For his jaw-work would never, I'm sure, s'elp me Bob, Have come for to go for to do sich a job! Hark ye, Waters,—or Matcham,—whichever's your purser-name, —T'other, your own, is, I'm sartain, the worser name,— Twelve years have we lived on like brother and brother!— Now—your course lays one way, and mine lays another!"
"No, William, it may not be so; Blood calls for blood!—'tis Heaven's decree! And thou with me this night must go, And give me to the gallows-tree! Ha!—see—He smiles—He points the way! On, William, on! no more delay!"
Now Bill,—so the story, as told to me, goes, And who, as his last speech sufficiently shows, Was a "regular trump,"—did not like to "turn Nose;" But then came a thunder-clap louder than any Of those that preceded, though they were so many; And hark!—as its rumblings subside in a hum, What sound mingles too?—"By the hokey—A Drum!!"
I remember I once heard my Grandfather say, That some sixty years since he was going that way, When they shew'd him the spot Where the gibbet—was not— On which Matcham's corse had been hung up to rot; It had fall'n down—but how long before, he'd forgot; And they told him, I think, at the Bear in Devizes, The town where the Sessions are held,—or the 'Sizes, That Matcham confess'd, And made a clean breast To the May'r; but that, after he'd had a night's rest, And the storm had subsided, he "pooh-pooh'd" his friend, Swearing all was a lie from beginning to end; Said "he'd only been drunk— That his spirits had sunk At the thunder—the storm put him into a funk,— That, in fact, he had nothing at all on his conscience, And found out, in short, he'd been talking great nonsense."—
But now one Mr. Jones Comes forth and depones That, fifteen years since, he had heard certain groans On his way to Stone Henge (to examine the stones Described in a work of the late Sir John Soane's,) That he'd followed the moans, And, led by their tones, Found a Raven a-picking a Drummer-boy's bones!— —Then the Colonel wrote word From the King's Forty-third, That the story was certainly true which they'd heard, For, that one of their drummers, and one Sergeant Matcham, Had "brushed with the dibs," and they never could catch 'em.
So Justice was sure, though a long time she'd lagg'd, And the Sergeant, in spite of his "Gammon," got "scragg'd;" And people averred That an ugly black bird, The Raven, 'twas hinted, of whom we have heard, Though the story, I own, appears rather absurd, Was seen (Gervase Matcham not being interr'd), To roost all that night on the murderer's gibbet; An odd thing, if so, and it may be a fib—it, However, 's a thing Nature's laws don't prohibit. —Next morning, they add, that "black gentleman" flies out, Having picked Matcham's nose off, and gobbled his eyes out!
Moral.