Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/158

136 'Twas fiddle in the forc's'le—'twas garlands on the mast,

For everyone got married, and I went ashore at last.

I left 'em all in couples a'kissing on the decks.

I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques.

In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed,

I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest!

That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again

Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.

They're just beyond your skyline, howe'er so far you cruise

In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.