nths o' twenty-four, to leave or take at choice.
'Twas on me like a thunderclap--it racked me through an' through--
Temptation past the show o' speech, unnamable an' new--
The Sin against the Holy Ghost?... An' under all, our screw.
That storm blew by but left behind her anchor-shiftin' swell,
Thou knowest all my heart an' mind, Thou knowest, Lord, I fell.
Third on the _Mary Gloster_ then, and first that night in Hell!
Yet was Thy hand beneath my head: about my feet Thy care--
Fra' Deli clear to Torres Strait, the trial o' despair,
But when we touched the Barrier Reef Thy answer to my prayer!
We dared na run that sea by night but lay an' held our fire,
An' I was drowzin' on the hatch--sick--sick wi' doubt an' tire:
"_Better the sight of eyes that see than wanderin' o' desire!_"
Ye mind that word? Clear as our gongs--again, an' once again,
When rippin' down through coral-trash ran out our moorin'-chain;
An' by Thy Grace I had the Light to see my duty plain.
Light on the engine-room--no more--clear as our carbons burn.
I've lost it since a thousand times, but never past return.

* * * * *

Obsairve! Per annum we'll have here two thousand souls aboard--
Think not I dare to justify myself before the Lord,
But--average fifteen hunder' souls safe-borne fra' port to port--
I _am_ o' service to my kind. Ye wadna' blame the thought?
Maybe they steam from grace to wrath--to sin by folly led,--
It isna mine to judge their path--their lives are on my head.
Mine at the last--when all is done it all comes back to me,
The fault that leaves six thousand ton a log upon the sea.
We'll tak' one stretch--three weeks an' odd by any road ye steer--
Fra' Cape Town east to Wellington--ye need an engineer.
Fail there--ye've time to weld your shaft--ay, eat it, ere ye're spoke,
Or make Kerguelen under sail--three jiggers burned wi' smoke!
An' home again, the Rio run: it's no child's play to go
Steamin' to bell for fourteen days o' snow an' floe an' blow--
The bergs like kelpies overside that girn an' turn an' shift
Whaur, grindin' like the Mills o' God, goes by the big South drift.
(Hail, snow an' ice that praise the Lord: I've met them at their work,
An' wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.)
Yon's strain, hard strain, o' head an' hand, for though Thy Power