beyond any sort of
reproach. He is evidently an actual, real water sailor who learned
his nautics within the smell of bilgewater and the open sea. My own
education as an able seaman was gained from years of youthful deep
study of dime-novel sea yarns by Ned Buntline, Fenimore Cooper,
Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., Billy Bowline, and other masters of the sea in
libraries. I have, however, made two ocean trips from Norfolk to
New York, time 23 hours. On both occasions I went sound asleep at
the end of the first hour and woke up at the end of twenty-third
hour. Under such circumstances I may have missed many important
details of realism. I have also visited often the tomb of that fine
old patriot-pirate and ex-Alderman, Dominique You, in the old
French cemetery at New Orleans. As chief gunner for Jean Lafitte,
he was some pirate; as chief artilleryman for Gen. Andrew Jackson
at the battle of New Orleans, he was some patriot. I feel stronger
in my piracy than in my seamanship. I love criticism--especially of
poetry. If there is a single verse, or, mayhap, one line, of
"Derelict" that will hold, without leaking, anything of a specific
gravity heavier than moonshine, it would surprise me. But it
_seems_ to, when it is adopted as a "real chanty"--and that's the
test, that it "seems."

Y. E. A.

Transcriber's Note: The book has a Pocket with 7 pieces of paper
which are facsimiles noted in the text. The music for _A Piratical
Ballad_ has been transcribed and is available as a _Finale_ .mus
file, a pdf file, and a midi file.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Dead Men's Song, by Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

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