Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/44

But the time was nigh to homeward hie, when, imagine our despair!
For the best of the lot we hadn’t got—the flea of the polar bear.
Oh, his face was long and his breath was strong, as the Skipper he says to me:
“I wants you to linger ’ere, my lad, by the shores of the Hartic Sea;
I wants you to ’unt the polar bear the perishin’ winter through,
And if flea ye find of its breed and kind, there’s a ’undred quid for you.”
But I shook my head: “No, Cap,” I said; “It’s yourself I’d like to please,
But I tells ye flat I wouldn’t do that if ye went on yer bended knees.”
Then the Captain spat in the seething brine, and he says: “Good luck to you,
If it can’t be did for a ’undred quid, supposin’ we call it two?”
So that was why they said good-by, and they sailed and left me there—
Alone, alone in the Arctic Zone to hunt for the polar bear.

Oh, the days were slow and packed with woe, till I thought they would never end;
And I used to sit when the fire was lit, with my pipe for my only friend.
And I tried to sing some rollicky thing, but my song broke off in a prayer,