Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/64

46 They lied about the purple Sea

That gave them scanty bread,

They lied about the Earth beneath,

The Heavens overhead,

For they had looked too often on

Black rum when that was red.

They told their tales of wreck and wrong,

Of shame and lust and fraud,

They backed their toughest statements with

The Brimstone of the Lord,

And crackling oaths went to and fro

Across the fist-banged board.

And there was Hans the blue-eyed Dane,

Bull-throated, bare of arm,

Who carried on his hairy chest

The maid Ultruda's charm—

The little silver crucifix

That keeps a man from harm.

And there was Jake Without-the-Ears,

And Pamba the Malay,

And Carboy Gin the Guinea cook,

And Luz from Vigo Bay,

And Honest Jack who sold them slops

And harvested their pay.

And there was Salem Hardieker,

A lean Bostonian he—

Russ, German, English, Halfbreed, Finn,

Yank, Dane, and Portuguee,

At Fultah Fisher's boarding-house

They rested from the sea.