THE RHYME OF THE THREE SEALERS

Away by the lands of the Japanee
Where the paper lanterns glow
And the crews of all the shipping drink
In the house of Blood Street Joe,
At twilight, when the landward breeze
Brings up the harbour noise,
And ebb of Yokohama Bay

Swigs chattering through the buoys,
In Cisco's Dewdrop Dining-Rooms
They tell the tale anew

Of a hidden sea and a hidden fight,

When the Baltic ran from the Northern

Light

And the Stralsund fought the two.

Now this is the Law of the Muscovite, that he proves with shot and steel,

When ye come by his isles in the Smoky Sea ye must not take the seal,

Where the gray sea goes nakedly between the weedhung shelves,

And the little blue fox he is bred for his skin and the seal they breed for themselves;

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For when the matkas seek the shore to drop their pups aland,

The great man-seal haul out of the sea, a-roaring, band by band;

And when the first September gales have slaked their rutting-wrath,

The great man-seal haul back to the sea and no man knows their path.

Then dark they lie and stark they lie-rookery, dune, and floe,

And the Northern Lights come down o' nights to

dance with the houseless snow;

And God Who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe,

He hears the cry of the little kit-fox and the wind along the snow.

But since our women must walk gay and money buys

their gear,

The sealing-boats they filch that way at hazard year

by year.

English they be and Japanee that hang on the Brown Bear's flank,

And some be Scot, but the worst of the lot, and the boldest thieves, be Yank!

It was the sealer Northern Light, to the Smoky Seas she bore,

With a stovepipe stuck from a starboard port and the Russian flag at her fore.

(Baltic, Stralsund, and Northern Light-oh! they were birds of a feather

Slipping away to the Smoky Seas, three seal-thieves together!)

And at last she came to a sandy cove and the Baltic lay therein,

But her men were up with the herding seal to drive and club and skin.

There were fifteen hundred skins abeach, cool pelt and proper fur,

When the Northern Light drove into the bight and the sea-mist drove with her.

The Baltic called her men and weighed—she could not choose but run

For a stovepipe seen through the closing mist, it shows like a four-inch gun.

(And loss it is that is sad as death to lose both trip and ship

And lie for a rotting contraband on Vladivostock slip.) She turned and dived in the sea-smother as a rabbit dives in the whins,

And the Northern Light sent up her boats to steal the stolen skins.

They had not brought a load to side or slid their

hatches clear,

When they were aware of a sloop-of-war, ghost-white and very near.

Her flag she showed, and her guns she showed-three of them, black, abeam,

And a funnel white with the crusted salt, but never a show of steam.

There was no time to man the brakes, they knocked the shackle free,

And the Northern Light stood out again, goose-winged to open sea.

(For life it is that is worse than death, by force of Russian law

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

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;

But I've six thousand skins below, and Yeddo Port to see,

And there's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-Three:

So go in peace to the naked seas with empty holds to fill,

And I'll be good to your seal this catch, as many as I shall kill!"