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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=511090" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Rhyme Of The Three Captains</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">. . . At the close of a winter day,<br>Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;<br>And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,<br>And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,<br>And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,<br>And he was Captain of the Fleet -- the bravest of them all.<br>Their good guns guarded their great gray sides<br> that were thirty foot in the sheer,<br>When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.<br>Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze,<br>Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.<br>Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,<br>And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.<br>&quot;I ha' paid Port dues for your Law,&quot; quoth he, &quot;and where is the Law ye boast<br>If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?<br>Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,<br>We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;<br>I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare<br>Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.<br>There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,<br>And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.<br>He would not fly the Rovers' flag -- the bloody or the black,<br>But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.<br>He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew -- he swore it was only a loan;<br>But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.<br>He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,<br>He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened pine;<br>He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,<br>He has taken my grinning heathen gods -- and what should he want o' these?<br>My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;<br>He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.<br>I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,<br>But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.<br>Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,<br>I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;<br>I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,<br>And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;<br>I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,<br>I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;<br>I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,<br>And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;<br>I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side,<br> and tasselled his beard i' the mesh,<br>And spitted his crew on the live bamboo<br> that grows through the gangrened flesh;<br>I had hove him down by the mangroves brown,<br> where the mud-reef sucks and draws,<br>Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws!<br>He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,<br>For he carries the taint of a musky ship -- the reek of the slaver's dhow!&quot;<br>The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold,<br>And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold,<br>And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt: --<br>&quot;Good Sir, we ha' dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth were cut.<br>Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus:<br>He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us.<br>We ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar -- we know that his price is fair,<br>And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre.<br>And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you,<br>We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true.&quot;<br>The skipper called to the tall taffrail: -- &quot;And what is that to me?<br>Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy-three?<br>Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o' the Line?<br>He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as mine.<br>There is never a Law on the Cocos Keys to hold a white man in,<br>But we do not steal the niggers' meal, for that is a nigger's sin.<br>Must he have his Law as a quid to chaw, or laid in brass on his wheel?<br>Does he steal with tears when he buccaneers?<br> 'Fore Gad, then, why does he steal?&quot;<br>The skipper bit on a deep-sea word, and the word it was not sweet,<br>For he could see the Captains Three had signalled to the Fleet.<br>But three and two, in white and blue, the whimpering flags began: --<br>&quot;We have heard a tale of a -- foreign sail, but he is a merchantman.&quot;<br>The skipper peered beneath his palm and swore by the Great Horn Spoon: --<br>&quot;'Fore Gad, the Chaplain of the Fleet would bless my picaroon!&quot;<br>By two and three the flags blew free to lash the laughing air: --<br>&quot;We have sold our spars to the merchantman -- we know that his price is fair.&quot;<br>The skipper winked his Western eye, and swore by a China storm: --<br>&quot;They ha' rigged him a Joseph's jury-coat to keep his honour warm.&quot;<br>The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,<br>The skipper spat in the empty hold and mourned for a wasted cord.<br>Masthead -- masthead, the signal sped by the line o' the British craft;<br>The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed: --<br>&quot;It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all -- we'll out to the seas again --<br>Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his grapnel-chain.<br>It's fore-sheet free, with her head to the sea,<br> and the swing of the unbought brine --<br>We'll make no sport in an English court till we come as a ship o' the Line:<br>Till we come as a ship o' the Line, my lads, of thirty foot in the sheer,<br>Lifting again from the outer main with news of a privateer;<br>Flying his pluck at our mizzen-truck for weft of Admiralty,<br>Heaving his head for our dipsey-lead in sign that we keep the sea.<br>Then fore-sheet home as she lifts to the foam -- we stand on the outward tack,<br>We are paid in the coin of the white man's trade --<br> the bezant is hard, ay, and black.<br>The frigate-bird shall carry my word to the Kling and the Orang-Laut<br>How a man may sail from a heathen coast to be robbed in a Christian port;<br>How a man may be robbed in Christian port while Three Great Captains there<br>Shall dip their flag to a slaver's rag -- to show that his trade is fair!&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Rudyard+Kipling">Rudyard Kipling</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=511090" data-title="The Rhyme Of The Three Captains de Rudyard Kipling" data-description=". . . At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,
And one was Master of..."></div>
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