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 word-, line-, and punctuation-changes of the shrewdest sort, until at present the nuances are as perfect as the author can make them. From the beginning, Allison's intention has been to complete the poem as Stevenson himself might have done, and explanation of the italicized fifth stanza is found in that intention; it is a delicate intimation that the theme of a woman is foreign to the main idea.

The following version of the ballad incorporates its author's final revisions:

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

The mate was fixed by the bos'n's pike,

The bos'n brained with a marlinspike,

And Cookey's throat was marked belike

It had been gripped

By fingers ten;

And there they lay,

All good dead men,