Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг
The Seven Seas

THE STORY OF UNG

 
Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow.
Fashioned the form of a tribesman – gaily he whistled and sung,
Working the snow with his fingers. Read ye the Story of Ung!
 
 
Pleased was his tribe with that image – came in their hundreds to scan —
Handled it, smelt it, and grunted: "Verily, this is a man!
Thus do we carry our lances – thus is a war-belt slung.
Ay, it is even as we are. Glory and honour to Ung!"
 
 
Later he pictured an aurochs – later he pictured a bear —
Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair —
Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone —
Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone.
 
 
Swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still —
Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill,
Hunters and fishers and trappers – presently whispering low;
"Yea, they are like – and it may be… But how does the Picture-man know?
 
 
"Ung – hath he slept with the Aurochs – watched where the Mastodon roam?
Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head – followed the Sabre-tooth home?
Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated us so,
How is there truth in his image – the man that he fashioned of snow?"
 
 
Wroth was that maker of pictures – hotly he answered the call:
"Hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all!
Look at the beasts when ye hunt them!" Swift from the tumult he broke,
Ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke.
 
 
And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,
Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed:
"If they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done,
And each man would make him a picture, and – what would become of my son?
 
 
"There would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift,
Nor dole of the oily timber that strands with the Baltic drift;
No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale;
No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.
 
 
"Thou hast not toiled at the fishing when the sodden trammels freeze,
Nor worked the war-boats outward, through the rush of the rock-staked seas,
Yet they bring thee fish and plunder – full meal and an easy bed —
And all for the sake of thy pictures." And Ung held down his head.
 
 
"Thou hast not stood to the aurochs when the red snow reeks of the fight;
Men have no time at the houghing to count his curls aright:
And the heart of the hairy mammoth thou sayest they do not see,
Yet they save it whole from the beaches and broil the best for thee.
 
 
"And now do they press to thy pictures, with open mouth and eye,
And a little gift in the doorway, and the praise no gift can buy:
But – sure they have doubted thy pictures, and that is a grievous stain —
Son that can see so clearly, return them their gifts again."
 
 
And Ung looked down at his deerskins – their broad shell-tasselled bands —
And Ung drew downward his mitten and looked at his naked hands;
And he gloved himself and departed, and he heard his father, behind:
"Son that can see so clearly, rejoice that thy tribe is blind!"
 
 
Straight on that glittering ice-field, by the caves of the lost Dordogne,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scribing on bone —
Even to mammoth editions. Gaily he whistled and sung,
Blessing his tribe for their blindness. Heed ye the Story of Ung!
 

THE THREE-DECKER

"The three-volume novel is extinct."

 
Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best —
The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.
 
 
Fair held our breeze behind us – 'twas warm with lovers' prayers:
We'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs;
They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.
 
 
Carambas and serapés we waved to every wind,
We smoked good Corpo Bacco when our sweethearts proved unkind;
With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed
We also took our manners to the Islands of the Blest.
 
 
We asked no social questions – we pumped no hidden shame —
We never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came:
We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell.
We weren't exactly Yussufs, but – Zuleika didn't tell!
 
 
No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared,
The villain got his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.
'Twas fiddles in the foc'sle – 'twas garlands on the mast,
For every one got married, and I went ashore at last.
 
 
I left 'em all in couples akissing on the decks.
I left the lovers loving and the parents signing checks.
In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed,
I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest!
 
 
That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again
Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
They're just beyond the skyline, howe'er so far you cruise
In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.
 
 
Swing round your aching search-light – 'twill show no haven's peace!
Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas!
Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's unrest —
But you aren't a knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest.
 
 
And when you're threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,
On a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
You'll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.
 
 
You'll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread;
You'll hear the long-drawn thunder 'neath her leaping figure-head;
While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine
Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine.
 
 
Hull down – hull down and under – she dwindles to a speck,
With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.
All's well – all's well aboard her – she's dropped you far behind,
With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.
 
 
Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make?
You're manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming's sake?
Well, tinker up your engines – you know your business best —
She's taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!
 

AN AMERICAN

The American Spirit speaks:

 
If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, my Avatar.
 
 
Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
 
 
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve.
 
 
His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
 
 
Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,
Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crumb of praise;
 
 
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood: his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
 
 
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole —
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
 
 
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that – have no doubts;
 
 
That checks him foolish hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
 
 
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
 
 
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Our bar or weighed defence prefer —
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter?
 
 
Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But while reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
 
 
Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
 
 
Lo! imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, disreputable, vast —
And, in the teeth of all the schools
I – I shall save him at the last!
 

THE MARY GLOSTER

 
I've paid for your sickest fancies; I've humoured your crackedest whim —
Dick, it's your daddy – dying: you've got to listen to him!
Good for a fortnight, am I? The doctor told you? He lied.
I shall go under by morning, and – Put that nurse outside.
Never seen death yet, Dickie? Well, now is your time to learn,
And you'll wish you held my record before it comes to your turn.
Not counting the Line and the Foundry, the yards and the village, too,
I've made myself and a million; but I'm damned if I made you.
Master at two-and-twenty, and married at twenty three —
Ten thousand men on the pay-roll, and forty freighters at sea!
Fifty years between 'em, and every year of it fight,
And now I'm Sir Anthony Gloster, dying, a baronite:
For I lunched with His Royal 'Ighness – what was it the papers a-had?
"Not least of our merchant-princes." Dickie, that's me, your dad!
I didn't begin with askings. I took my job and I stuck;
And I took the chances they wouldn't, an' now they're calling it luck.
Lord, what boats I've handled – rotten and leaky and old!
Ran 'em, or – opened the bilge-cock, precisely as I was told.
Grub that 'ud bind you crazy, and crews that 'ud turn you gray,
And a big fat lump of insurance to cover the risk on the way.
The others they duresn't do it; they said they valued their life
(They've served me since as skippers). I went, and I took my wife.
Over the world I drove 'em, married at twenty-three,
And your mother saving the money and making a man of me.
I was content to be master, but she said there was better behind;
She took the chances I wouldn't, and I followed your mother blind.
She egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me clear the loan,
When we bought half shares in a cheap 'un and hoisted a flag of our own.
Patching and coaling on credit, and living the Lord knew how,
We started the Red Ox freighters – we've eight-and-thirty now.
And those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights,
And we knew we were making our fortune, but she died in Macassar Straits —
By the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank —
And we dropped her in fourteen fathom; I pricked it off where she sank.
Owners we were, full owners, and the boat was christened for her,
And she died out there in childbed. My heart, how young we were!
So I went on a spree round Java and well-nigh ran her ashore,
But your mother came and warned me and I wouldn't liquor no more.
Strict I stuck to my business, afraid to stop or I'd think,
Saving the money (she warned me), and letting the other men drink.
And I met McCullough in London (I'd saved five 'undred then),
And 'tween us we started the Foundry – three forges and twenty men:
Cheap repairs for the cheap 'uns. It paid, and the business grew,
For I bought me a steam-lathe patent, and that was a gold mine too.
"Cheaper to build 'em than buy 'em," I said, but McCullough he shied,
And we wasted a year in talking before we moved to the Clyde.
And the Lines were all beginning, and we all of us started fair,
Building our engines like houses and staying the boilers square.
But McCullough 'e wanted cabins with marble and maple and all,
And Brussels and Utrecht velvet, and baths and a Social Hall,
And pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light.
But McCullough he died in the Sixties, and – Well, I'm dying to-night…
I knew —I knew what was coming, when we bid on the Byfleet's keel.
They piddled and piffled with iron: I'd given my orders for steel.
Steel and the first expansions. It paid, I tell you, it paid,
When we came with our nine-knot freighters and collared the long-run trade.
And they asked me how I did it, and I gave 'em the Scripture text,
"You keep your light so shining a little in front o' the next!"
They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.
Then came the armour-contracts, but that was McCullough's side;
He was always best in the Foundry, but better, perhaps, he died.
I went through his private papers; the notes was plainer than print;
And I'm no fool to finish if a man'll give me a hint.
(I remember his widow was angry.) So I saw what the drawings meant,
And I started the six-inch rollers, and it paid me sixty per cent.
Sixty per cent with failures, and more than twice we could do,
And a quarter-million to credit, and I saved it all for you.
I thought – it doesn't matter – you seemed to favour your ma,
But you're nearer forty than thirty, and I know the kind you are.
Harrer an' Trinity College! I ought to ha' sent you to sea —
But I stood you an education, an' what have you done for me?
The things I knew was proper you wouldn't thank me to give,
And the things I knew was rotten you said was the way to live;
For you muddled with books and pictures, an' china an' etchin's an' fans,
And your rooms at college was beastly – more like a whore's than a man's —
Till you married that thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone,
And she gave you your social nonsense; but where's that kid o' your own?
I've seen your carriages blocking the half of the Cromwell Road,
But never the doctor's brougham to help the missus unload.
(So there isn't even a grandchild, an' the Gloster family's done.)
Not like your mother, she isn't. She carried her freight each run.
But they died, the pore little beggars! At sea she had 'em – they died.
Only you, an' you stood it; you haven't stood much beside —
Weak, a liar, and idle, and mean as a collier's whelp
Nosing for scraps in the galley. No help – my son was no help!
So he gets three 'undred thousand, in trust and the interest paid.
I wouldn't give it you, Dickie – you see, I made it in trade.
You're saved from soiling your fingers, and if you have no child,
It all comes back to the business. Gad, won't your wife be wild!
Calls and calls in her carriage, her 'andkerchief up to 'er eye:
"Daddy! dear daddy's dyin'!" and doing her best to cry.
Grateful? Oh, yes, I'm grateful, but keep 'er away from here.
Your mother 'ud never ha' stood 'er, and, anyhow, women are queer…
There's women will say I've married a second time. Not quite!
But give pore Aggie a hundred, and tell her your lawyers'll fight.
She was the best o' the boiling – you'll meet her before it ends;
I'm in for a row with the mother – I'll leave you settle my friends:
For a man he must go with a woman, which women don't understand —
Or the sort that say they can see it they aren't the marrying brand.
But I wanted to speak o' your mother that's Lady Gloster still.
I'm going to up and see her, without it's hurting the will.
Here! Take your hand off the bell-pull. Five thousand's waiting for you,
If you'll only listen a minute, and do as I bid you do.
They'll try to prove me a loony, and, if you bungle, they can;
And I've only you to trust to! (O God, why ain't he a man?)
There's some waste money on marbles, the same as McCullough tried —
Marbles and mausoleums – but I call that sinful pride.
There's some ship bodies for burial – we've carried 'em, soldered and packed;
Down in their wills they wrote it, and nobody called them cracked.
But me – I've too much money, and people might… All my fault:
It come o' hoping for grandsons and buying that Wokin' vault.
I'm sick o' the 'ole dam' business; I'm going back where I came.
Dick, you're the son o' my body, and you'll take charge o' the same!
I'm going to lie by your mother, ten thousand mile away,
And they'll want to send me to Woking; and that's where you'll earn your pay.
I've thought it out on the quiet, the same as it ought to be done —
Quiet, and decent, and proper – an' here's your orders, my son.
You know the Line? You don't, though. You write to the Board, and tell
Your father's death has upset you an' you're goin' to cruise for a spell,
An' you'd like the Mary Gloster – I've held her ready for this —
They'll put her in working order an' you'll take her out as she is.
Yes, it was money idle when I patched her and put her aside
(Thank God, I can pay for my fancies!) – the boat where your mother died,
By the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank,
We dropped her – I think I told you – and I pricked it off where she sank.
[Tiny she looked on the grating – that oily, treacly sea – ]
Hundred and eighteen East, remember, and South just three.
Easy bearings to carry – three South – three to the dot;
But I gave McAndrews a copy in case of dying – or not.
And so you'll write to McAndrews, he's Chief of the Maori Line;
They'll give him leave, if you ask 'em and say it's business o' mine.
I built three boats for the Maoris, an' very well pleased they were,
An' I've known Mac since the Fifties, and Mac knew me – and her.
After the first stroke warned me I sent him the money to keep
Against the time you'd claim it, committin' your dad to the deep;
For you are the son o' my body, and Mac was my oldest friend,
I've never asked 'im to dinner, but he'll see it out to the end.
Stiff-necked Glasgow beggar, I've heard he's prayed for my soul,
But he couldn't lie if you paid him, and he'd starve before he stole.
He'll take the Mary in ballast – you'll find her a lively ship;
And you'll take Sir Anthony Gloster, that goes on his wedding-trip,
Lashed in our old deck-cabin with all three port-holes wide,
The kick o' the screw beneath him and the round blue seas outside!
Sir Anthony Gloster's carriage – our 'ouse-flag flyin' free —
Ten thousand men on the pay-roll and forty freighters at sea!
He made himself and a million, but this world is a fleetin' show,
And he'll go to the wife of 'is bosom the same as he ought to go.
By the heel of the Paternosters – there isn't a chance to mistake —
And Mac'll pay you the money as soon as the bubbles break!
Five thousand for six weeks' cruising, the stanchest freighter afloat,
And Mac he'll give you your bonus the minute I'm out o' the boat!
He'll take you round to Macassar, and you'll come back alone;
He knows what I want o' the Mary… I'll do what I please with my own.
Your mother 'ud call it wasteful, but I've seven-and-thirty more;
I'll come in my private carriage and bid it wait at the door…
For my son 'e was never a credit: 'e muddled with books and art,
And 'e lived on Sir Anthony's money and 'e broke Sir Anthony's heart.
There isn't even a grandchild, and the Gloster family's done —
The only one you left me, O mother, the only one!
Harrer an' Trinity College! Me slavin' early an' late,
An' he thinks I'm dyin' crazy, and you're in Macassar Strait!
Flesh o' my flesh, my dearie, for ever an' ever amen,
That first stroke come for a warning; I ought to ha' gone to you then,
But – cheap repairs for a cheap 'un – the doctors said I'd do:
Mary, why didn't you warn me? I've allus heeded to you,
Excep' – I know – about women; but you are a spirit now;
An', wife, they was only women, and I was a man. That's how.
An' a man 'e must go with a woman, as you could not understand;
But I never talked 'em secrets. I paid 'em out o' hand.
Thank Gawd, I can pay for my fancies! Now what's five thousand to me,
For a berth off the Paternosters in the haven where I would be?
I believe in the Resurrection, if I read my Bible plain,
But I wouldn't trust 'em at Wokin'; we're safer at sea again.
For the heart it shall go with the treasure – go down to the sea in ships.
I'm sick of the hired women – I'll kiss my girl on her lips!
I'll be content with my fountain, I'll drink from my own well,
And the wife of my youth shall charm me – an' the rest can go to Hell!
(Dickie, he will, that's certain.) I'll lie in our standin'-bed,
An' Mac'll take her in ballast – and she trims best by the head…
Down by the head an' sinkin'. Her fires are drawn and cold,
And the water's splashin' hollow on the skin of the empty hold —
Churning an' choking and chuckling, quiet and scummy and dark —
Full to her lower hatches and risin' steady. Hark!
That was the after-bulkhead … she's flooded from stem to stern…
Never seen death yet, Dickie?.. Well, now is your time to learn!