Arthur Hale.
May 1, 1898.
A BALLAD OF MANILA BAY
Your threats how vain, Corregidor;
Your rampired batteries, feared no more;
Your frowning guard at Manila gate,—
When our Captain went before!
Lights out. Into the unknown gloom
From the windy, glimmering, wide sea-room
Challenging fate in that dark strait
We dared the hidden doom.
But the death in the deep awoke not then;
Mine and torpedo they spoke not then;
From the heights that loomed on our passing line
The thunders broke not then.
Safe through the perilous dark we sped,
Quiet each ship as the quiet dead,
Till the guns of El Fraile roared—too late,
And the steel prows forged ahead.
Mute each ship as the mute-mouth grave,
A ghost leviathan cleaving the wave;
But deep in its heart the great fires throb,
The travailing engines rave.
The ponderous pistons urge like fate,
The red-throat furnaces roar elate,
And the sweating stokers stagger and swoon
In a heat more fierce than hate.
So through the dark we stole our way
Past the grim warders and into the bay,
Past Kalibuyo, and past Salinas,—
And came at the break of day