  Away by the lands of the Japanee, When the paper lanterns glow And the crews of all the shipping drink In the house of Blood Street Joe, At twilight, when the landward breeze Brings up the harbour noise, And ebb of Yokohama Bay Swigs chattering through the buoys, In Cisco's Dewdrop Dining Rooms They tell the tale anew Of a hidden sea and a hidden fight, When the Baltic ran from the Northern Light And the Stralsund fought the two! Now this is the Law of the Muscovite, that he proves with shot and steel, When ye come by his isles in the Smoky Sea ye must not take the seal, Where the gray sea goes nakedly between the weed-hung shelves, And the little blue fox he is bred for his skin and the seal they breed for themselves; The great man-seal haul out of the sea, aroaring, band by band; And when the first September gales have slaked their rutting-wrath, The great man-seal haul back to the sea and no man knows their path. Then dark they lie and stark they lie—rookery, dune, and floe, And the Northern Lights come down o' nights to dance with the houseless snow. And God who clears the grounding berg and steers the grinding floe, He hears the cry of the little kit-fox and the lemming on the snow. But since our women must walk gay and money buys their gear, The sealing-boats they filch that way at hazard year by year. English they be and Japanee that hang on the Brown Bear's flank, And some be Scot, but the worst, God wot, and the boldest thieves, be Yank! It was the sealer Northern Light, to the Smoky Seas she bore. (Baltic, Stralsund, and Northern Light—oh! they were birds of a feather— Slipping away to the Smoky Seas, three seal-thieves together!) And at last she came to a sandy cove and the Baltic lay therein, But her men were up with the herding seal to drive and club and skin. There were fifteen hundred skins abeach, cool pelt and proper fur, When the Northern Light drove into the bight and the sea-mist drove with her. The Baltic called her men and weighed—she could not choose but run— For a stovepipe seen through the closing mist, it shows like a four-inch gun (And loss it is that is sad as death to lose both trip and ship And lie for a rotting contraband on Vladivostock slip). She turned and dived in the sea-smother as a rabbit dives in the whins, And the Northern Light sent up her boats to steal the stolen skins. When they were aware of a sloop-of-war, ghost-white and very near. Her flag she showed, and her guns she showed—three of them, black, abeam, And a funnel white with the crusted salt, but never a show of steam. There was no time to man the brakes, they knocked the shackle free, And the Northern Light stood out again, goose-winged to open sea. (For life it is that is worse than death, by force of Russian law To work in the mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw!) They had not run a mile from shore—they heard no shots behind— When the skipper smote his hand on his thigh and threw her up in the wind: "Bluffed—raised out on a bluff," said he, "for if my name's Tom Hall, You must set a thief to catch a thief—and a thief has caught us all! The hand that spilled the wind from her sail was the hand of Reuben Paine! He has rigged and trigged her with paint and spar, and, faith, he has faked her well— But I'd know the Stralsund's deckhouse yet from here to the booms o' Hell. Oh, once we ha' met at Baltimore, and twice on Boston pier, But the sickest day for you, Reuben Paine, was the day that you came here— The day that you came here, my lad, to scare us from our seal With your funnel made o' your painted cloth, and your guns o' rotten deal! Ring and blow for the Baltic now, and head her back to the bay, For we'll come into the game again with a double deck to play!" They rang and blew the sealers' call—the poaching cry o' the sea— And they raised the Baltic out of the mist, and an angry ship was she: And blind they groped through the whirling white, and blind to the bay again, They laid them down by bitt and boat, their pistols in their belts, And: "Will you fight for it, Reuben Paine, or will you share the pelts?" A dog-toothed laugh laughed Reuben Paine, and bared his flenching knife. "Yea, skin for skin, and all that he hath a man will give for his life; But I've six thousand skins below, and Yeddo Port to see, And there's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-Three. So go in peace to the naked seas with empty holds to fill, And I'll be good to your seal this catch, as many as I shall kill." Answered the snap of a closing lock and the jar of a gun-butt slid, But the tender fog shut fold on fold to hide the wrong they did. The weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak, The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free, (Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!) The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue, But three were down on the Baltic's deck and two of the Stralsund's crew. An arm's length out and overside the banked fog held them bound; But, as they heard or groan or word, they fired at the sound. For one cried out on the name of God, and one to have him cease; And the questing volley found them both and bade them hold their peace. |
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