Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/120

98 Yes, somehow and somewhere and always

We were first when the trouble began,

From a lottery-row in Manila,

To an I.D.B. race on the Pan

(Dear boys!),

With the Mounted Police on the Pan.

We preach in advance of the Army,

We skirmish ahead of the Church,

With never a gunboat to help us

When we're scuppered and left in the lurch.

But we know as the cartridges finish,

And we're filed on our last little shelves,

That the Legion that never was 'listed

Will send us as good as ourselves

(Good men!),

Five hundred as good as ourselves.

Then a health (we must drink it in whispers)

To our wholly unauthorised horde—

To the line of our dusty foreloopers,

The Gentlemen Rovers abroad—