Eight bells ring out from the fo'c'sle head;
With a cheery good-eve the mate comes forth,
The second goes off to his welcome bed,
After giving the course as west by north.
As I stand with my chin on the dodger's ridge
And dreamily eye our plunging craft
There's a rattle of heels on the flying bridge
And a gruff report that the watch is aft.
"All right!" says the mate, with a glance below;
"Relieve the wheel and the lookout there!"
And then we begin, with our to and fro,
The walk and the talk we nightly share.
In silence at first--for our pipes are lit--
We pace and puff, and we pause and turn,
And it's up and down, for she rolls a bit
When flying light with the sea astern.
But there's a key in the hands of smoke
That fits a lock in the lazy brain,
And we spring the wards with a quiet joke
And rout out a store of yarns again.
Our voices ring with a pleasant sound,
And now and again it seems to me
As though in the roar that sweeps around
We are joined by the social sea.
And in that strange way that talk is bred--
As a few grains sown bring the wheaty stack--
So something afresh the other said
Put the roaming brain on another tack.
And we boxed about in an aimless way,
With a careless fling from sea to land,
And spoke of the world as a young man may
When he hasn't the time to understand.
We spoke of the land that gave us birth;
We spoke of the one that's home to me:
Those nations destined to shape the earth
To the single state it is to be--
Of tricks we played in our school-boy days;
The fun and frolic of being young;
How we jollied life in a hundred ways
With gibes that pleased and jests that stung.
And of those we loved--for now we knew
With half our life in the dim astern
Which lights were false and which lights were true,
And whose was the hand that bid them burn.
Of the rough hard life the sailor leads,
The pay he gets and the sharks ashore,
And what are the laws our shipping needs,
And the way things went in days of yore.
Of the sailing ship as she yet survives,
Of rigs we never shall see again,
Of inventions that save our seamen's lives
And murder the breed of sailor men.
We talk of these and of many a bout
When a crew came aft for a nasty row--
When loud comes a cry from the fore look-out
Of a light on the starboard bow.
"All right!" the response. Then we train our eyes
On the western rim thro' the closing night.
It's a steamer, sure, by the flash and size--
A liner's electric masthead light.
She rises fast, and is soon up well,
Rushing along 'neath a smoky pall,
A mass of lights like some huge hotel
Ablaze for its annual boarders' ball.
As she grows abeam--for we give her space,
For twenty knots is a right of way--
There's an answering glow on old ocean's face
And a glint on the waves in play.
And I think, as I watch her speed along,
Of the many lives she holds in trust,
And ponder what they would do, that throng,
If Fate should get in a deadly thrust.
A ship like ours or a sunken wreck--
A crash in the dark--some plates stove in--
A frightened rush for the upper deck,
And a clamorous, cowardly din!
How some would die as men should die,
How some would perish in selfish strife,
How some in that hour would dignify
By a noble close a worthless life.
How she whose vigor we oft deride--
The woman--would show her courage then,
And meet her death at her lover's side
In a way to shame the best of men.
But, Science be praised, it is seldom now
We lose a ship by a sudden crash,
For what with the lights and the whistle's row
We luckily dodge a general smash.
And that ship there, as she breasts the swell
And ghosts her side with a foamy ridge,
Has had many a shave--for logs don't tell
All the tales of a steamer's bridge.
In silence we watch her for quite a time
Until she becomes a smoky blear,
Then as ten rings out from the fo'c'sle chime
I go aft to my cheese and my beer.