s!--
All lookouts clapped
On paradise--
All souls bound just contrariwise--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

[Illustration]

Fifteen men of 'em good and true--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of stuff untold.
And they lay there
That had took the plum,
With sightless glare
And their lips struck dumb,
While we shared all by the rule of thumb--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

* * * * *

_More was seen through the sternlight screen--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings ondoubt where a woman had been--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife
And that took the blade!
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_

* * * * *

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight,
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight,
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight--
With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

PICTURING _the_ INDIVIDUAL

One of my earliest recollections of my friend and business associate for
very many, very short and very happy years, is a conversation in the old
Chicago Press Club rooms on South Clark Street, near Madison, in the early
90's, about three o'clock one morning, when the time for confidences
arrives--if ever it does. What his especial business in Chicago was at that
particular moment makes no particular difference. He might have been
rehearsing "The Ogallallas," or mayhap he was on duty as Kentucky
commissioner to the World's Fair. As a matter of mere fact he was there and
we had spent an evening and part of a morning together and were bent on
extending the session to day