When, looking over the starboard side,
She sees a face as pale
As snow upon a mountain top,
Or moonlight on a sail.
The figure attached to the face rises, waist high, out of the water, and extends his hands.
“O God!” she screams, “is this my love?
Can this my Joey be?”
And then she casts her eyes above
And jumps into the sea.
And sure enough the phantom was Joey, who had not deserted her, as she had cruelly thought, but had been drowned in the very spot where the vessel she was on board of was becalmed. The song wound up with an injunction to all wives or sweethearts of sailors never to think that their Joes have played them false because they do not return to their homes.