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A Chase in Soundings
(Excerpt)
HOVE in the stays, she lay, | |
| In the blockading grounds | |
| Of the North Carolina sounds, | |
| Beleaguered half a day, | |
| The good ship Heir of Lynn: | 5 |
| The still air shut her in | |
| The very focus of light; | |
| Where the sea grows hot and white, | |
| As if it had turned to salt | |
| Or solid rock, with a fault | 10 |
| That clipped the horizon’s edge | |
| In a long, irregular ledge. | |
| |
| In the summer of sixty-three, | |
| As still as they could be | |
| The sea and air; and every | 15 |
| Spar lost in a reverie | |
| Over its shadow, under | |
| The sea, in curious wonder. | |
| Not a cat’s-paw turned the streamer, | |
| To spell at it letter by letter; | 20 |
| And for fifty leagues and better, | |
| You could see the smoke of a steamer | |
| Drifting down in the offing. | |
| |
| You could hear the sullen coughing, | |
| Over sixty miles away, | 25 |
| At Wilmington harbor and bay,— | |
| The pounding of cannon and mortar, | |
| And the groan of torpedoes under | |
| The sea, that came over her quarter, | |
| Like the bellow of smothered thunder. | 30 |
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| Uneasily looked the master | |
| Now at the sea, and then | |
| Off in a dream again | |
| Of home, as the boa’s’in cast her | |
| Dipsy 1 lead in the shallow, | 35 |
| To a sort of nasal tune, | |
| Larded with talk and tallow, | |
| In the bight of the afternoon; | |
| Drawling from sea-worn topics, | |
| To sudden squalls in the tropics; | 40 |
| And lee shores whose hot lips | |
| Had opened and swallowed ships,— | |
| Till the slow talk seemed to pool | |
| In the old Annapolis school; | |
| And the master was “Joe” again, | 45 |
| With his messmate, Geordie of Maine, | |
| Who loved, with loves like his own, | |
| Sweethearts they never had won,— | |
| Like the small blue flowers that live but a day, | |
| Sweet things, in the inlets of Chesapeake bay. | 50 |
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| The skies got bluer and bluer, | |
| Till the far-off gunboat knew her, | |
| And came up, hand over hand, | |
| With a rushing, like falling sand, | |
| Of the coils of her screw propeller, | 55 |
| Like the rifles that twist out her shell, or | |
| The leverage fold and grapple | |
| Of the sinewy boa-constrictor, | |
| While her stem peeled the scum as an apple, | |
| And the plunge of her steam beat the drums of a victor. | 60 |
| |
| But, like omens in viscera, | |
| Old Romans sought for; | |
| As the stars fought with Sisera,— | |
| Faster and faster, | |
| And over and past her, | 65 |
| Swirled the cone of the cyclone and fought her. | |
| |
| It touched the sails of the schooner, | |
| The turn of a sandglass sooner; | |
| And, breaking in sudden bloom,— | |
| From her foretop studding-sail, | 70 |
| Aft to her spanker-boom, | |
| Down to her channel rail, | |
| Fore to her flying jibs;— | |
| Like a lily when it buds | |
| She flowers out of her ribs, | 75 |
| White as the salt-sea seeds; | |
| Bobbing about, like a cup. | |
| Then a shout, and the hunt is up. * * * * * | |
| “A lee shore and a squall! | |
| There ’s but one of them all,” | 80 |
| As he steamed within hail, | |
| Said the gunboat commander, | |
| “Of all that I know, | |
| That would dare carry sail | |
| To beach her and land her,— | 85 |
| Annapolis Joe.” | |
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| As swivels of hail | |
| Beat tattoo on the sail, | |
| And he looked on the sea, | |
| Where tempests unchain | 90 |
| Reefs hid in white rain; | |
| “You ’ll want boots to follow me | |
| All night,” said the master, | |
| “With your wrought-iron roster, | |
| Old Geordie of Maine.” | 95 |
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| Ship ahoy! Heave to! | |
| The wind seemed to wrestle | |
| With steam in the vessel, | |
| Elastic and pliant, | |
| And wrench the propeller | 100 |
| With the strength of a giant, | |
| As if to compel her | |
| To shrink from the danger, | |
| Her keel timbers ran on: | |
| But grimly defiant, | 105 |
| And louder and louder, | |
| In the bursting of powder, | |
| Spoke the lips of her cannon. * * * * * | |
| “It ’s Joe, to be sure,” | |
| Said the naval commander, | 110 |
| “And he ’s got a king’s ransom of stores in his keel; | |
| I ’ll sink her, or land her | |
| Rawbones on a lee shore, | |
| To feed the Sound fishes on his powder and steel.” | |
| |
| A reef rose between, | 115 |
| Where the keel of the sea seemed to jib and careen, | |
| And pitch on its beam ends, | |
| About which the water ran smooth with vehemence, | |
| Like the gates of a lock when its hinges are swung, | |
| And the bore of the current shoots out in a tongue. | 120 |
| But, taut and close-lasted, | |
| From keelson to masthead; | |
| Spanker vangs to spritsail-yards, | |
| And flying jib-boom, | |
| As true to her halyards | 125 |
| As belle of the room | |
| When her feet, to the click of the castanets clipping, | |
| Make rhymes to the music’s adagios tripping,— | |
| As dangerously quick as Herodias’ daughter,— | |
| While the wind kissed her lacings and whipped round her quarter, | 130 |
| And pitch-piped its bagpipes as shrill as a demon, | |
| The sloop felt her tiller; | |
| Double banked her propeller; | |
| And rushed at the sluice with a full head of steam on. * * * * * | |
| But the fugitive ship, | 135 |
| Like a wild thing at bay, | |
| That will double and slip | |
| From corner to panel, | |
| Like a fox, stole away. | |
| The nips of the channel, | 140 |
| In shoulder and knee, | |
| Seemed to rise and bend over her; | |
| The bellowing sea, | |
| To open and cover her; | |
| And where the surf plunges | 145 |
| Through coral and sponges | |
| In slings of the wind as light as a feather, | |
| To rove the blue phosphorous frost in her shrouds, | |
| The burst of the clouds, | |
| Mixed the sea and the sand and the sky altogether, | 150 |
| And the welkin cracked open with terrible brightening, | |
| Till the bed of the sea seemed to bristle with lightning; | |
| And over, and under | |
| The clamor of waves, pealed the toll of the thunder. * * * * * | |
| So, all through the night, in the darkness they grope. | 155 |
| In the wash of the water, and swish of the spray, | |
| Clung the sloop to the chase, as if towed by a rope, | |
| Till the morning gun slipped it, at breaking of day. | |
| Tira la, sang the bugles,—a fox stole away! | |
| Stole away; stole away: stole away; stole away: | 160 |
| Tira la sang the bugles,—a fox stole away. | |
| |
| In Wilmington town there ’s a ringing of bells | |
| As the people go down, to see her come in, | |
| With her flag at the forepeak, as every one tells | |
| Of the old ballad luck of the ship Heir of Lynn. | 165 |
| |
| If you ever meet Josey, or Geordie of Maine, | |
| You will run the chase over in soundings again. | |
