All but loblolly Ben,* who living near,
And a lay-brother, chuckled at their fear,
Joy'd when the trembling tars the form explor'd,
Held his rude sides, and vehemently roar❜d.
Now startled, Caustic laid his book aside,
And to his eye his quizzing-glass applied,
Then, as Tom's arms the sable load depose
Close at his feet, his indignation glows:
Your errand say! what subject bring you here?
"Tis mine to heal, and not lay out the bier.
Dare you come hither to inhume your bones?
Hence, hence, and cast the corse to Davy Jones.
Then thus Tom Tug: no corpse we hither bear—
A wounded man demands your honour's care; 2355
Fell'd by a shark, who with his whacking tail
Took flat aback the negro's swelling sail.
First he sung out, but soon in speechless woe
Fell on the deck, and seem'd fast broaching to :
And now we come, ere his life's ensign fall,
To beg his timbers you will overhaul.
The loblolly-boy is generally some lazy land-lubber transferred from the crew to the surgeon and his mates. the birth-deck to and fro at noon, beating an old mortar with a pestle, to summon together the sick; exposed as he passes the mess-places to the derision of the tars, who vociferate to each other, "Look out, there, fore and aft, for your bread bags!"
The fam'd physician tucks his robes around,
And his probe seizes to detect the wound,
O'er the mute moor, stretch'd in the cockpit, hung,
His temples chaf'd, and ey'd his lolling tongue,
Mark'd ev'ry symptom, found the pulse was low,
And shook his head prophetic, and his brow
Severely knit; while whispers circle round
Among the graduates with a look profound.
In vain the doctor plies his healing art,
His efforts to the moor no life impart-
When honest Tom from his side-pocket drew
An elixir approv'd by all the crew,
And made the patient swill; his eye, though dim,
Resum'd its speculation; each dull limb
Seem'd strung anew, and on the seamy floor
He turn'd and faintly cried oh! give me more!
Then thus the leech with uprais'd hand and eyes: No skill of mine this sudden cure supplies,
But, Tom, when life seem'd doubtful in the wound, Beyond my drugs, a healing medicine found!
Again the crew, vociferously loud,
Press round the hostile fish, a darkening croud.
Jack Junk, a jolly tar of sturdy form,
With laughing visage, blanch'd with many a storm,
The lists now enter'd, recent from the glass,
Which his loyal hand was ever loth to pass.
With all sail set, and a wide rolling gait,
He came on deck to meet a tragic fate.
Thus and no near!* a merry shipmate cries,
Jack heard, and roll'd the pupils of his eyes,
A hiccup fetch'd, and, with his grotesque pace,
Relax'd the muscles of the captain's face.
Then, couching his long spear, all gleaming bright,
He bawl'd "Free commerce and a sailor's right!"
But, urging with no ballast but all sail,
The weather-gage he lost, and the hurl'd tail
Of the enormous monster dealt a blow,
That, on his beam ends, laid the sailor low;
The sot unwary smiting in the part
Where the ribs rally round the beating heart.
Neptune, in serious, contemplative mood,
Propp'd on his massy trident as he stood,
Serenely cried, Jack lies along the floor
Like a ship stranded on a leeward shore:
Thus and no near! is an admonition given the helmsman, in steering a ship, to keep his sails full; and it is here a tacit reprehension passed on Jack, whose weather leech was shaking in the wind.
Stopp'd, stopp'd his grog-a lamentable wreck-
Hence with him overboard, and swab the deck.
The tar the mandate heard, and turning round
His half-rais'd brow, cried, panting with his wound,
Not yet is stopp'd my grog-I yet can drink
A good skin full, whatever you may think;
My sails were only taken flat aback,
Come, messmates, to his hammock help poor Jack.
Meantime on every side the monster turns,
His tongue protrudes, and with new fury burns,
Then writhing with a bound, his tail he rears,
That tail which every true bred seaman fears:
The broken cohorts mix, and none is found
Whose valour dares approach the fish to wound;
Their upheld spears, their handspikes he derides,
The broad deck trembles as he shakes his sides.
Then thus cried brother Jonathan, (a tar
Who long with spouting whales had wag'd the war
In tumbling seas; the object of his toil
To share the bones, and barrel off the oil:*) 2425
The crews of the ships from Massachusetts, employed in the whale fishery on the coast of Brazil, and in the Pacific Ocean, receive no wages, but have a certain share of the whale-bone, and of the blubber or whale-oil.
Say, shipmates, often dreadful in your might,
Virginians, fearless in the main-deck fight,
Ye Pennsylvanians, a sea-born band,
To peril train'd by Ocean's plastic hand,
Ye brave Kentuckians who oft have stood
O'er the scalp'd Indian, rioting in blood ;*
And you, my countrymen, though last, not least
Dear to this heart, sons of the smiling East,
Say, does a fish, unwieldy on the deck,
Repress your valour, and your prowess check?
Then let this unassisted arm sustain
The fearful combat, and the honour gain-
On me the glory of the day depends,
With this one stroke behold the conflict ends.
He said, and plung'd his formidable spear
In the shark's side, to stop his full career;
That the Kentuckians scalp their Indian enemies, when lying dead in the field of battle, may be presumed on the ground of the lex talionis, as the victorious red-men never fail to scalp the Kentuckians. But when the Quarterly Reviewers, on no other authority but that of an anonymous writer, affirm, in unqualified language, (vol. 27, p. 74,) that the Kentuckians cut their razor-straps from the backs of living Indians, an universal yell of execration must follow such a calumny, deepening as it extends. But admitting the delinquency of the Kentuckians, are they not surpassed by their accusers in the savageness of their ferocity? for, from what living author's back have not they cut out a full "pound of flesh," whose political tenets differed from their own?-See the New Monthly Magazine, Obituary for 1821, p. 256. Article Keats.
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