With a laudable view of enhancing his country’s naval pride,
When people inquired her size, Lieutenant Belaye replied,
“Oh, my ship, my ship is the first of the Hundred and Seventy-ones!”
Which meant her tonnage, but people imagined it meant her guns.
Whenever I went on board he would beckon me down below,
“Come down, Little Buttercup, come” (for he loved to call me so),
And he’d tell of the fights at sea in which he’d taken a part,
And so Lieutenant Belaye won poor Poll Pineapple’s heart!
But at length his orders came, and he said one day, said he,
“I’m ordered to sail with the Hot Cross Bun to the German Sea.”
And the Portsmouth maidens wept when they learnt the evil day,
For every Portsmouth maid loved good Lieutenant Belaye.
And I went to a back back street, with plenty of cheap cheap shops,
And I bought an oilskin hat and a second-hand suit of slops,
And I went to Lieutenant Belaye (and he never suspected me!)
And I entered myself as a chap as wanted to go to sea.
We sailed that afternoon at the mystic hour of one,—
Remarkably nice young men were the crew of the Hot Cross Bun,
I’m sorry to say that I’ve heard that sailors sometimes swear,
But I never yet heard a Bun say anything wrong, I declare.
When Jack Tars meet, they meet with a “Messmate, ho! What cheer?”
But here, on the Hot Cross Bun, it was “How do you do, my dear?”
When Jack Tars growl, I believe they growl with a big big D—
But the strongest oath of the Hot Cross Buns was a mild “Dear me!”
Yet, though they were all well-bred, you could scarcely call them slick:
Whenever a sea was on, they were all extremely sick;
And whenever the weather was calm, and the wind was light and fair,
They spent more time than a sailor should on his back back hair.
They certainly shivered and shook when ordered aloft to run,
And they screamed when Lieutenant Belaye discharged his only gun.
And as he was proud of his gun—such pride is hardly wrong—
The Lieutenant was blazing away at intervals all day long.
They all agreed very well, though at times you heard it said
That Bill had a way of his own of making his lips look red—
That Joe looked quite his age—or somebody might declare
That Barnacle’s long pig-tail was never his own own hair.
Belaye would admit that his men were of no great use to him,
“But, then,” he would say, “there is little to do on a gunboat trim
I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun too—
And it is such a treat to sail with a gentle well-bred crew.”