* * * * *

THE RHYME OF THE “RIO GRANDE.”

  By Salthouse Dock as I did pass one day not long ago,
  I chanced to meet a sailorman that once I used to know;
  His eye it had a roving gleam, his step was light and gay,
  He looked like one just in from sea to blow a nine months’ pay;
  And as he passed athwart my hawse he hailed me long and loud: 
  “Oh, find me now a full saloon where I may stand the crowd;
  I’m out to rouse the town this night as any man may be
  That’s just come off a salvage job, my lad, the same as me....

“Bringin’ home the Rio Grande, her as used to be Crack o’ Moore, Mackellar’s Line, back in ninety-three; First of all the ’Frisco fleet, home in ninety-eight, Ninety days to Carrick Roads from the Golden Gate; Thirty shellbacks used to have all their work to do Hauling them big yards of hers, heaving of her to Down off Dago Ramirez, where the big winds blow, Bringin’ home the Rio Grande twenty years ago.

  “We picked her up one morning homeward bound from Portland, Maine,
  In a nine-knot grunting cargo tramp, by name the Crown o’ Spain;
  The day was breaking cold and dark and dirty as could be,
  It was blowin’ up for weather as we couldn’t help but see. 
  Her crew was gone the Lord knows where—­and Fritz had left her too;
  He must have took a scare and quit afore his job was through;
  We tried to pass a hawser, but it warn’t no kind o’ good,
  So we put a salvage crew aboard to save her if we could....

    “Bringin’ home the Rio Grande and her freight as well,
    Half-a-score of steamboatmen cursin’ her like hell,
    Flounderin’ in the flooded waist, scramblin’ for a hold,
    Hangin’ on by teeth and toes, dippin’ when she rolled;
    Ginger Dan the donkeyman, Joe the ‘doctor’s’ mate,
    Lumpers off the water-front, greasers from the Plate,
    That’s the sort o’ crowd we had to reef and steer and haul,
    Bringin’ home the Rio Grande—­ship and freight and all.

  “Our mate had served his time in sail, he was a bully boy,
  It’d wake a corpse to hear him hail ‘Foretopsail yard ahoy!’
  He knew the ways o’ squaresail and he knew the way to swear,
  He’d got the habit of it here and there and everywhere;
  He’d some samples from the Baltic and some more from Mozambique;
  Chinook and Chink and double-Dutch and Mexican and Greek;
  He’d a word or two in Russian, but he learned the best he’d got
  Off a pious preachin’ skipper—­and he had to use the lot....

    “Bringin’ home the Rio Grande in a seven-days’ gale,
    Seven days and seven nights, the same as JONAH’S whale,
    Standard compass gone to bits, steering all adrift,
    Courses split and mainmast sprung, cargo on the shift ... 
    Not a chart in all the ship left to steer her by,
    Not a glimpse of star or sun in the bloomin’ sky ... 
    Two men at the jury wheel, kickin’ like a mule,
    Bringin’ home the Rio Grande up to Liverpool.