Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/329



“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,

Like break-o’-day in a boozing-ken—
 * Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of a whole ship’s list—
 * Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Dead and bedamned and the rest gone whist!—
 * Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

The skipper lay with his nob in gore Where the scullion’s ax his cheek had shore— Arid the scullion he was stabbed times four.