The Dead Men's Song Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its Author Young Ewing Allison

Excerpt

DERELICT

A Reminiscence of “Treasure Island”

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!

(Cap’n Billy Bones his song.)

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!

The mate was fixed by the bos’n’s pike,

The bos’n brained with a marlinspike

And Cookey’s throat was marked belike

It had been gripped

By fingers ten;

And there they lay,

All good dead men,

Like break-o’-day in a boozing-ken—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of a whole ship’s list—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Dead and bedamned, and the rest gone whist!—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

The skipper lay with his nob in gore

Where the scullion’s axe his cheek had shore—

And the scullion he was stabbed times four.

And there they lay,

And the soggy skies

Dripped all day long

In up-staring eyes—

At murk sunset and at foul sunrise—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of ’em stiff and stark—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Ten of the crew had the Murder mark—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

’Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead,

Or a yawing hole in a battered head—

And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.

And there they lay—

Aye, damn my eyes!—

All lookouts clapped

On paradise—

All souls bound just contrariwise—

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

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!

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....