Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/84

62 To work in the mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw.)

They had not run a mile from shore—they heard no shots behind—

When the skipper smote his hand on his thigh and threw her up in the wind:

'Bluffed—raised out on a bluff,' said he, 'for if my name's Tom Hall,

'You must set a thief to catch a thief—and a thief has caught us all!

'By every butt in Oregon and every spar in Maine,

'The hand that spilled the wind from her sail was the hand of Reuben Paine!

'He has rigged and trigged her with paint and spar, and, faith, he has faked her well—

'But I'd know the Stralsund's deckhouse yet from here to the booms o' Hell.

'Oh, once we ha' met at Baltimore, and twice on Boston pier,

'But the sickest day for you, Reuben Paine, was the day that you came here—

'The day that you came here, my lad, to scare us from our seal