THE THREE CAPTAINS
59
‘Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
‘I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
‘I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
‘And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
‘I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark
‘I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
‘I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
‘And lashed 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!
‘I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
‘I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
‘And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
‘I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark
‘I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
‘I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
‘And lashed 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!
