Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/134

Then towards the davits moved he, where the lightest whale-boat hung;
And he worked with silent caution till upon the sea she swung,
When he paused, and looked at Lambert, and the spirit in him cried
Not to leave him, but to venture, as since childhood, side by side;
And the spirit's cry was answered, for he touched the sleeper's lip.
Who awoke and heard of Nathan's plan to leave th' accursed ship.

When 'twas told, they rose in silence, and looked outward to the land,
But they only saw Nantucket, with its homely, boat-lined strand;
But they saw it—oh! so plainly—through the glass of coming doom.
Then they crept into the whale-boat, and pulled toward the forest's gloom,—
All their suffering clear that moment, like the moonlight on their wake,