Page:Pieces People Ask For.djvu/42

32 THE FLAG.

AN INCIDENT OF STRAIN'S EXPEDITION.

have got the bearings quite,
 * Though I've followed the course for many a year,

If he was crazy, clean outright,
 * Or only what you might say was "queer."

He was just a simple sailor man.
 * I mind it as well as yisterday,

When we messed aboard of the old "Cyane."
 * Lord! how the time does slip away!

That was five and thirty year ago,
 * When ships was ships, and men was men,

And sailors wasn't afraid to go
 * To sea in a Yankee vessel then.

He was only a sort of bosun's mate,
 * But every inch of him taut and trim;

Stars and anchors and togs of state
 * Tailors don't build for the likes of him.

He flew a no-account sort of name,
 * A reg'lar fo'castle "Jim" or "Jack,"

With a plain "McGinnis" abaft the same,
 * Giner'ly reefed to simple "Mack."

Mack, we allowed, was sorter queer—
 * Ballast or compass wasn't right;

Till he licked four juicers, one day, a fear
 * Prevailed that he hadn't larned to fight.

But I reckoned the captain knowed his man,
 * When he put the flag in his hand the day

That we went ashore from the old "Cyane,"
 * On a madman's cruise for Darien Bay.

Forty days in the wilderness
 * We toiled and suffered and starved with Strain.

Losing the number of many a mess
 * In the Devil's swamps of the Spanish Main.

All of us starved, and many died.
 * One lay down, in his dull despair;

His stronger messmate went to his side,—
 * We left them both in the jungle there.