The topsail yard point to the wind, boys, See all clear to reef each course; Let the foresheet go, - don't mind, boys, Though the weather should be worse. Fore and aft the spritsail-yard get, Now the dreadful thunder's roaring, One wide water all around us, All above us one black sky; Different deaths at once surround us : Hark! what means that dreadful cry? The foremast 's gone! cries every tongue out, O'er the lee twelve feet 'bove deck; A leak beneath the chest-tree's sprung out, Call all hands to clear the wreck. Quick the lanyards cut to pieces; Come, my hearts, be stout and bold; Plumb the well, the leak increases, Four feet water in the hold! While o'er the ship wild waves are beating, Still the leak is gaining on us! Both chain-pumps are choked below: Heaven have mercy here upon us! For only that can save us now. O'er the lee-beam is the land, boys, Let the guns o'erboard be thrown; To the pumps call every hand, boys, See our mizzen-mast is gone. The leak we've found, it cannot pour fast; We've lightened her a foot or more; Up and rig a jury foremast, She rights! she rights, boys! wear off shore. GEORGE ALEXANDER STEVENS. YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. YE mariners of England, Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe! And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The spirits of your fathers For the deck it was their field of fame, Britannia needs no bulwarks, With thunders from her native oak, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow. The meteor flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, When the storm has ceased to blow; THOMAS CAMPBELL. TOM BOWLING. HERE, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling, No more he 'll hear the tempest howling, Tom never from his word departed, His friends were many and true-hearted, When a squall, upon a sudden, And the lowering thunder grumbled, And the lightning jumped and tumbled, And the rushing water soaks all, And the steward jumps up, and hastens For the necessary basins. Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered, The mothers clutched their children; Mashallah Bismillah!" As the warring waters doused them, Then all the fleas in Jewry (I wot those greasy Rabbins And each man moaned and jabbered in His filthy Jewish gabardine, In woe and lamentation, And howling consternation. And the splashing water drenches Their dirty brats and wenches; And they crawl from bales and benches, In a hundred thousand stenches. This was the white squall famous, And which all will well remember, When a Prussian captain of Lancers |