ey 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 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," sai