Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/740

 722 RUDYARD KIPLING'S VERSE

For there lay the Mary of the Tower ; his ship of war so strong, And he would discover, certaynely, if his shipwrights did him wrong.

He told not none of his setting forth, nor yet where he would

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(But only my Lord of Arundel) and meanly did he show, In an old jerkin and patched hose that no man might him

mark. With his frieze hood and cloak above, he looked like any clerk.

He was at Hamull on the Hoke about the hour of the tide, And saw the Mary haled into dock, the winter to abide, With all her tackle and habilaments which are the King his

own; But then ran on his false shipwrights and stripped her to the

bone.

They heaved the main-mast overboard, that was of a trusty

tree, And they wrote down it was spent and lost by force of weather

at sea.

But they sawen it into planks and strakes as far as it might go, To maken beds for their own wives and little children also.

There was a knave called Slingawai, he crope beneath the

deck, Crying: "Good felawes, come and see! The ship is nigh a

wreck! For the storm that took our tall main-mast, it blew so fierce

and fell, Alack! it hath taken the kettles and pans, and this brass pott

as well!"

With that he set the pott on his head and hied him up the

hatch, While all the shipwrights ran below to find what they might

snatch;