Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/85

Rh 'With your funnel made o' your painted cloth, and your guns o' rotten deal!

'Ring and blow for the Baltic now, and head her back to the bay,

'And we'll come into the game again—with a double deck to play!"

They rang and blew the sealers' call—the poaching cry of the sea—

And they raised the Baltic out of the mist, and an angry ship was she:

And blind they groped through the whirling white and blind to the bay again,

Till they heard the creak of the Stralsund's boom and the clank of her mooring chain.

They laid them down by bitt and boat, their pistols in their belts,

And: 'Will you fight for it, Reuben Paine, or will you share the pelts?'

A dog-toothed laugh laughed Reuben Paine, and bared his flenching-knife.

'Yea, skin for skin, and all that he hath a man will give for his life;