Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/59

Rh An' there it stopped: cut off: no more; that quiet, certain voice—

For me, six months o' twenty-four, to leave or take at choice.

'Twas on me like a thunderclap—it racked me through an' through—

Temptation past the show o' speech, unnameable an' new—

The Sin against the Holy Ghost? . . . An' under all, our screw.

That storm blew by but left behind her anchor-shiftin' swell,

Thou knowest all my heart an' mind, Thou knowest, Lord, I fell.

Third on the Mary Gloster then, and first that night in Hell!

Yet was Thy hand beneath my head, about my feet Thy care—

Fra' Deli clear to Torres Strait, the trial o' despair,

But when we touched the Barrier Reef Thy answer to my prayer!

We dared na run that sea by night but lay an' held our fire,