Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/165

Rh Master at two-and-twenty, and married at twenty-three—

Ten thousand men on the pay-roll, and forty freighters at sea!

Fifty years between 'em, and every year of it fight,

And now I'm Sir Anthony Gloster, dying, a baronite:

For I lunched with his Royal 'Ighness—what was it the papers a-had?

'Not least of our merchant-princes.' Dickie, that's me, your dad!

I didn't begin with askings. I took my job and I stuck;

And I took the chances they wouldn't, an' now they're calling it luck.

Lord, what boats I've handled—rotten and leaky and old!

Ran 'em, or—opened the bilge-cock, precisely as I was told.

Grub that 'ud bind you crazy, and crews that 'ud turn you grey,

And a big fat lump of insurance to cover the risk on the way.