Volume 146 — ADVENTURERS.
Reading edition
It must have been off a pirate trip, In a life forgot 'o me, That I saw the Barbary pirate ship Come close-hauled out of the sea; She crawled in under a goat-cropped scaur Beneath the fisher-huts, And she sent a dozen o' men ashore To fill her water-butts. I clambered up where the cliff sprung sheer Till I looked upon her decks And saw the plunder of half-a-year And the loot of her scuttled wrecks; There were gems and ivory, plate and pearl, And Tyrian rugs a-pile, And, set in the midst, was a milk-white girl, The loot of a Grecian isle. As white as the breasted terns that flit Was the smooth arm's rounded shape As she idly played with a pomegranate To anger a chained grey ape; And her Sun-God's self for diadem Had kissed her curls to gold; But blue—sea-blue as the sapphire gem, Her eyes were cold, sea-cold. And, gleam of shoulder and glint of tress, They sailed ere the sun went down And sold her, same as a black negress, For the marts o' Carthage town, Where she lived, mayhap, of her indolent grace, Content with her silks and rings, Or rose, by way of her wits, to place Her foot on the necks of kings. The deuce can tell you how this may be, 'Tis far as I take the tale; For it's lives upon lives ago, you see, That the Barbary men set sail; So I only know she was ivory white, As white as a sea-bird lone; And her eyes were wonderful blue and bright And hard as a sapphire stone.
The New Rowing.
"Give a last pull at the oar with clenched teeth and knit muscles."—The Young Man.
The Cork Examiner on Sir Percy Scott's letter:—
"'If a battleships is not safe either on the high seas or in rabour,' he asks, 'what is the use of a battlesh?'"
To be more accurate, this is how one puts it to one's neighbour after dinner, when—the ladies having removed themselves, and the necessity for mere social chit-chat being over—we men are at last able to devote ourselves to the affairs of empire.
LIGHT CAR TRIALS.
Spectator (to exhausted competitor reduced to running on trial hill).
"What would you say if that car ran away from you?"
Competitor
.
"Thank Heaven!"