Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/313

 They buried their dead, they bolted their beef, And started anew on the track of the thief,

Till, in place of the " Kalends of Greece," men said, "When Crook and his darlings come back with the head."

They had hunted the Boh from the hills to the plain He doubled and broke for the hills again:

They had crippled his power for rapine and raid, They had routed him out of his pet stockade,

And at last, they came, when the Daystar tired, To a camp deserted—a village fired.

A black cross blistered the Morning-gold, But the body upon it was stark and cold.

The wind of the dawn went merrily past, The high grass bowed her plumes to the blast.

And out of the grass, on a sudden, broke A spirtle of fire, a whorl of smoke—

And Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone Was blessed with a slug in the ulnar-bone— The gift of his enemy Boh Da Thone.

(Now a slug that is hammered from telegraph-wire Is a thorn in the flesh and a rankling fire.)

The shot-wound festered as shot-wounds may In a steaming barrack at Mandalay.

The left arm throbbed, and the Captain swore, "I'd like to be after the Boh once more!"