You are here
قراءة كتاب The Dead Men's Song Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The Dead Men's Song Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison
never have occurred to me. While not exactly thankful to the New York editor, I have abandoned a blood-thirsty raid on his sanctum and a righteous indignation has been dissipated in the serene pleasure I have found in expressing an appreciation of Allison’s genius in this private volume for our friends. God bless the Old Scout! In all of our intimate years there has been such a complete understanding between us that spoken words have been largely unnecessary, and so the opportunity of saying publicly what has ever been in my heart, is a rare one, eagerly seized.
C. I. H.
Louisville, November, 1914.
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED TO HER WHOSE FAITH IN ME AND LOVE FOR ME NEVER WANED
DERELICT
A Reminiscence of “Treasure Island”
YOUNG E. ALLISON
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
(Cap’n Billy Bones his song.)
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The mate was fixed by the bos’n’s pike,
The bos’n brained with a marlinspike
And Cookey’s throat was marked belike
It had been gripped
By fingers ten;
And there they lay,
All good dead men,
Like break-o’-day in a boozing-ken—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of a whole ship’s list—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and bedamned, and the rest gone whist!—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion’s axe his cheek had shore—
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay,
And the soggy skies
Dripped all day long
In up-staring eyes—
At murk sunset and at foul sunrise—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of ’em stiff and stark—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the Murder mark—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
’Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head—
And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.
And there they lay—
Aye, damn my eyes!—
All lookouts clapped
On paradise—
All souls bound just contrariwise—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of ’em good and true—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man jack could ha’ sailed with Old Pew—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of stuff untold.
And they lay there
That had took the plum,
With sightless glare
And their lips struck dumb,
While we shared all by the rule of thumb—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
More was seen through the sternlight screen—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings ondoubt where a woman had been—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench …
Or some shuddering maid…?
That dared the knife
And that took the blade!
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapped ’em all in a mains’l tight,
With twice ten turns of a hawser’s bight,
And we heaved ’em over and out of sight—
With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
PICTURING the INDIVIDUAL
One of my earliest recollections of my friend and business associate for very many, very short and very happy years, is a conversation in the old Chicago Press Club rooms on South Clark Street, near Madison, in the early 90’s, about three o’clock one morning, when the time for confidences arrives—if ever it does. What his especial business in Chicago was at