THE RHYME OF THE THREE SEALERS. Away by the lands of the Japanee, 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 weed-hung shelves, And the little blue fox he is bred for his skin and the seal they breed for themselves; For when the matkas seek the shore to drop their pups aland, The great man-seal haul out of the sea, aroaring, 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 lemming on 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, God wot, 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 sealthieves 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, ghostwhite and very near. Her flag she showed, and her guns she showedthree 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, goosewinged 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, "For we'll come into the game again with a double deck to play!" They rang and blew the sealers' call-the poaching cry o' the sea And they raised the Baltic out of the mist, and an angry ship was she: |