[Illustration]
[The President of the Board of Trade has, by command of
the QUEEN, conveyed, through the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution, to the crews of the lifeboats of Atherfield,
Brightstone, and Brooke, Her Majesty's warm appreciation of
their gallant conduct in saving the crew and passengers of the
steamship _Eider_.]
Your hand, lad! 'Tis wet with the brine, and the salt spray has
sodden your hair,
And the face of you glisteneth pale with the stress of the
struggle out there;
But the savour of salt is as sweet to the sense of a Briton,
sometimes,
As the fragrance of wet mignonette, or the scent of the
bee-haunted limes.
Ay, sweeter is manhood, though rough, than the smoothest
effeminate charms
To the old sea-king strain in our blood in the season of shocks
and alarms,
When the winds and the waves and the rocks make a chaos of danger
and strife;
And the need of the moment is pluck, and the guerdon of valour is
life.
That guerdon you've snatched from the teeth of the thundering
tiger-maw'd waves,
And the valour that smites is as naught, after all, to the valour
that saves.
They are safe on the shore, who had sunk in the whirl of the
floods but for _you_!
And some said you had lost your old grit and devotion! We knew
'twas not true.
The soft-hearted shore-going critics of conduct themselves would
not dare,
The trivial cocksure belittlers of dangers they have not to share,
Claim much--oh _so_ much, from rough manhood,--unflinching cool
daring in fray,
And selflessness utter, from toilers with little of praise, and
less pay.
Her heroes to get "on the cheap" from the rough rank and file of
her sons
Has been England's good fortune so long, that the scribblers'
swift tongue-babble runs
To the old easy tune without thought. "Gallant sea-dogs and
life-savers!" Yes!
But poor driblets of lyrical praise should not be their sole
guerdon, I guess.
On the coast, in the mine, at the fire, in the dark city byeways
at night,
They are ready the waves, or the flames, or the bludgeoning
burglar to fight.
And are _we_ quite as ready to mark, or to fashion a fitting reward
For the coarsely-clad commonplace men who our life and our
property guard?
A question _Punch_ puts to the Public, and on your behalf, my
brave lad,
And that of your labouring like. To accept your stout help we are
glad:
If supply of cheap heroes _should_ slacken, and life-saving valour
grow _dear_--
Say as courts, party-statesmen, or churches--'twould make some
exchequers look queer.
Do we quite do our part, we shore-goers? Those lights could not
flash through the fog,
And how often must rescuer willing lie idle on land like a log
For lack of the warning of coast-wires from lighthouse or
lightship? 'Tis flat
That we, lad, have not done _our_ duty, until we have altered all
that.
Well, you have done yours, and successfully, _this_ time at least,
and at night.
All rescued. How gladly the last must have looked on that brave
"Comet Light,"
As you put from the wave-battered wreck. Cold, surf-buffeted,
weary, and drenched,
Your pluck, like the glare from that beacon, flamed on through the
dark hours unquenched.
Nor then was your labour at end. There was treasure to save and to
land.
Well done, life-boat heroes, once more! _Punch_ is proud to take
grip of your hand!
Your QUEEN, ever quick to praise manhood, has spoken in words you
will hail,
And 'twere shame to the People of England, if they in their part
were to fail.
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