Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/402

 "Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws. "He is lazar within and lime without; ye can nose him far enow, "For he carries the taint of a musky ship—the reek of the slaver's dhow." The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold, And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold, And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt:— "Good Sir, we ha' dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth were cut. "Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus: "He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us. "And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre. "And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you, "We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true." The skipper called to the tall taffrail:—"And what is that to me? "Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy-three? "Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o' the Line? "He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as mine. "There is never a law on the Cocos Keys, to hold a white man in,
 * 'We ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar—we know that his price is fair,