Where you may be going
With these sons of the brine?
For my excellent crew,
Though foes they could thump any,
Are scarcely company
For a lady like you!
Ralph wasn’t going to stand this. He had been taught by the First Lord of the Admiralty that a British sailor is the finest fellow in the world, and if you can’t believe a First Lord, whom can you believe? So, pulling himself together he began:
“Haughty Sir, when you address”—
“Poetry, please,” said Captain Corcoran, “I allow no sailor to address me in prose.”