- end_line
- 779
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:50.352Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 691
- text
- “Take in your flying-kites, for there comes a lubber’s day
When gallant things will go, and the three-deckers first.”
My pipe is smoked out, and the grog runs slack;
But bowse away, wife, at your blessed Bohea;
This empty can here must needs solace me—
Nay, sweetheart, nay; I take that back;
Dick drinks from your eyes and he finds no lack!
TOM DEADLIGHT
During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a
grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle,
dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered
gun-decks of the British _Dreadnaught, 98,_ wandering in his mind,
though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by
snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates, his
watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old
sou’wester. Some names and phrases, with here and there a line, or part
of one; these, in his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their
original connection and import, he voluntarily derives, as he does the
measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife, and
now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last flutterings of
distempered thought.
Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,—
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain,
For I’ve received orders for to sail for the Deadman,
But hope with the grand fleet to see you again.
I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail aback, boys;
I have hove my ship to, for the strike soundings clear—
The black scud a’flying; but, by God’s blessing, dam’ me,
Right up the Channel for the Deadman I’ll steer.
I have worried through the waters that are called the Doldrums,
And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye grope—
Blast my eyes, but the light-ship is hid by the mist, lads:—
_Flying Dutchman_—odds bobbs—off the Cape of Good Hope!
But what’s this I feel that is fanning my cheek, Matt?
The white goney’s wing?—how she rolls!— ’t is the Cape!—
Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is mine, none;
And tell _Holy Joe_ to avast with the crape.
Dead reckoning, says _Joe_, it won’t do to go by;
But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky t’ other night.
Dead reckoning is good for to sail for the Deadman;
And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon near right.
The signal!—it streams for the grand fleet to anchor.
The captains—the trumpets—the hullabaloo!
Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your shank-painters,
For the Lord High Admiral, he’s squinting at you!
But give me my _tot_, Matt, before I roll over;
Jock, let’s have your flipper, it’s good for to feel;
And don’t sew me up without _baccy_ in mouth, boys,
And don’t blubber like lubbers when I turn up my keel.
JACK ROY
Kept up by relays of generations young
Never dies at halyards the blithe chorus sung;
While in sands, sounds, and seas where the storm-petrels cry,
Dropped mute around the globe, these halyard singers lie.
Short-lived the clippers for racing-cups that run,
And speeds in life’s career many a lavish mother’s-son.
But thou, manly king o’ the old _Splendid’s_ crew,
The ribbons o’ thy hat still a-fluttering, should fly—
A challenge, and forever, nor the bravery should rue.
Only in a tussle for the starry flag high,
When ’tis piety to do, and privilege to die.
Then, only then, would heaven think to lop
Such a cedar as the captain o’ the _Splendid’s_ main-top:
A belted sea-gentleman; a gallant, off-hand
Mercutio indifferent in life’s gay command.
Magnanimous in humor; when the splintering shot fell,
“Tooth-picks a-plenty, lads; thank ’em with a shell!”
- title
- Chunk 2