Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/74

These 'ere natives are safe as if locked and barred,
If you'll line that shoal with a mastiff guard!"

And the settlers looked at each other awhile,
Till the wonder toned to a well-pleased smile
When the brown ex-burglar said he knew,
And would show the whole of 'em what to do.

Some three weeks after, the guard was set;
And a native who swam to the shoal was met
By two half-starved dogs, when a mile from shore,—
And, somehow, that native was never seen more.
All the settlers were pleased with the capital plan,
And they voted their thanks to the hard-faced man.
For a year, each day did the government boat
Take the meat to the isle and its guard afloat.
In a line, on the face of the shoal, the dogs
Had a dry house each, on some anchored logs;
And the neck-chain from each stretched just half way