him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the
mesh,
And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened
flesh;
I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and
draws,
Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws!
He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,
For he carries the taint of a musky ship--the reek of the slaver's dhow!"
The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold,
And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold,
And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt:--
"Good Sir, we ha' dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth were cut.

"Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus:
He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us.

"We ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar--we know that his price is fair,
And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre.

"And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you,
We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true."
The skipper called to the tall taffrail:--"And what is that to me?
Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy-three?
Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o'
the Line?
He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as mine.

"There is never a Law on the Cocos Keys to hold a white man in,
But we do not steal the niggers' meal, for that is a nigger's sin.

"Must he have his Law as a quid to chaw, or laid in brass on his wheel?
Does he steal with tears when he buccaneers? 'Fore Gad, then, why does he
steal?"
The skipper bit on a deep-sea word, and the word it was not sweet,
For he could see the Captains Three had signalled to the Fleet.

But three and two, in white and blue, the whimpering flags began:--
"We have heard a tale of a--foreign sail, but he is a merchantman."
The skipper peered beneath his palm and swore by the Great Horn Spoon:--
"'Fore Gad, the Chaplain of the Fleet would bless my picaroon!"
By two and three the flags blew free to lash the laughing air:--
"We have sold our spars to the merchantman--we know that his price is fair."
The skipper winked his Western