Ezra Saunders, of Hopkins’ Creek,
Was the next old soldier asked to speak.
He’d seen his share of the thousands slain
In the active days of the Umteenth Maine;
And we settled hack to hear him tell
His reasons for thinking that “War is Hell.”
“Dear comrades of Keesuncook Post and ladies
of the Corps,
I thank you for this invite and I’m proud to
take the floor.
I was thinkin’ as I set here of the battles that
I’ve fought,
Of the suff’rin’ and the slaughter—and the
sudden, awful thought
Come across me that I’d taken very likely scores
of lives,
—Taken fathers from their children, taken
husbands from their wives.
While mad with heat of battle I was pumping
reeking lead,
Not knowing, no, nor caring, where the bullet
found its bed.
Now people they will ask us if we really, truly
know
For a fact that while a-fightin’ we have ever
killed a foe.
But it’s rare you find a soldier who has seen, in
heat of strife,
That the bullet he had fired was the one to take
a life.
Now, to-night, I’m going to tell you, though I
hate to, boys, I swan,
That I know I’ve done my murder; that I know
I’ve killed my man.
“’Twas when we got our rapping at the fight of
Hatcher’s Run;
I was running hard as any;—yes, I threw away
my gun
And the rest of my equipment, and proceeded,
friends, to steer
Just as fast as legs would help me for protection
at the rear.
I was quite a nervy sprinter—‘bout as swift as
you will find,
But I couldn’t shake that Johnny who came
slammin’ on behind;
For he had the Georgy straddle and was sort of
razor-edged,
And if nothin’ special busted, I was spoke for,
so I jedged.
He was hanging to his rifle, but he didn’t try to
shoot,
—He see he had me solid,—but I give the
blame galoot
A standard mile or such-like and had druv him
in the list,’
When I stepped upon a hubble, fell, and give
my leg a twist.
And the tumble sort of stunned me so I laid
there quite a spell,
Expectin’ that he’d grab me; just a-harkin’ for
his yell.
But things stayed calm and quiet, so I peeked;
he laid there sprawled
’Bout a dozen yards behind me. And he looked
so queer I crawled
Slowly back to reconnoitre, got where I could
see his head,
Saw his face was black’s a stove-pipe. Apo-
plexy! He was dead.
And I stood and wept above him, stirred, dear
comrades, to the peth
With the awful, awful pity for that man I’d run
to death.
And my conscience always pricked me and my
heart with grief is filled,
For there ain’t no question, comrades, there’s a
man I know I killed.”
We was off Seguin with the “Nancy P.,”
From the Sheepscot bound for Boston way;
We was one day out, and massy me!
What a leak she’d sprung sence she left the bay!
Why, never knowed sech an awful leak,
Gad, we made her old pump squeak,
Gad, we made it whoop and hump,
—Two at a turn, on the stiddy jump,—
Ker-chonk, ker-chump,
With an up yo-ho and a down ker-bump.
But the more we pumped, the more she drawed,
And we all turned to for a mighty pull;
But when we giv’ her the soundin’ rawd,
Why, bless yer soul, she was jam, bang full.
Plumb, jamb full to the soaked old deck,
Full to her gol-durned tarred old neck;
Wonder was how she kept aflo’t,
With the sea a-gozzlin’ in her thro’t;
Ker-do’t, ker-do’t,
—And we couldn’t leave, ’cause there wam’t no
bo’t.
So we hung to the pump and we giv’ her Cain,
Though it didn’t seem to be no use.
We thought of the good dry ground in Maine,
And durned the pelt of that old caboose,
Durned the hide of a tops’l tub,
For we never thought we’d see the Hub;
—Got so scart we forgot to thank
Our lucky stars for a lo’d of plank,
Ker-clink, ker-chank,
And still we bounced that old pump crank.
So we woggled on like a bale of hay,
And we set our teeth and we pumped with
groans.
At last we got to Boston bay;
But our arms were stretched to our ankle bones,
Hands were the size of corn-fed hams,
Eyes bulged out like the horns o’ rams,
We humped like monkeys bound for war,
And ev’ry man had a raw, red paw,
Ker-haw, ker-haw,
We beached that tub—and then we saw—
The “Nancy P.,” she’d grown that old,
Her butts had rotted all away.
Her lo’d of planks still jammed the hold,
But we’d left her bottom in Sheepscot bay.
So there we’d made a tumble try
To pump old ’Lantic ocean dry.
Over our rail, ’twixt you and me,
We’d h’isted, suttin, a mile of sea;
Blame me! But we
Was a darn sick crowd on the “Nancy P.”
I purchased a glass of stiff Maine grog for a
salty son of the sea,
And he confidentially leaned on the bar and
spun this yarn for me:
” ’Twas down in the aidge of the Saragos’ in the
nineteenth latitood
That I think I see the dumdest sight that ever a
sailor viewed.
“We was dobbin’ along with dumpy sails in a
nigh-about dead calm,
When the forrard watch give a good long squint,
and he yapped a loud alarm.
“And there afloat, two points to port, was a
shark, a reg’lar he’un,
The biggest shark I’ve ever seen outside the
Caribbeun.
“The old man reckoned he’d have his pelt, and
he yelled to the second mate,
Sling over the biggest hook ye’ve got, with a
good big plug o’ bait.’
“We dragged her astern and his nobs come on,
and then with a mighty splosh,
He gulped the pork, he bit the rope, and away
he went, by gosh!
“But when he’d hipered two miles to lee, and
begun to wopse and wheel,
We figgered he found the lunch he had a rayther
too hearty meal.
“Yet right behind the quarter wash the critter
swum next day,
And though he gobbled the bait we threw, he
allus got away.
“And at last, do ye know, we liked the cuss for
the way he showed his spunk,
And we named him Pete, and shared salt hoss,
and tossed him a daily junk.
“He got the orts of the fish we caught and, all
in all, I’ll bet
A two-hoss waggin wouldn’t haul the stuff that
critter et.
“Then one day Jones, the heftiest man we had
in all the crew,
Went off the rail with a swinging sail, and Pete
he et him too.
“From that time on we tipped our caps to the
razor-backed old brute,
—We tipped our caps and pulled a bow in a
most profound salute;
“For ’twas only due from a decent crew to honor
a comrade’s grave,
Though ’twas odd, I’ll own, to have a tomb afloat
on the ocean wave.
“And the old man ordered the fish lines coiled,
for he ’lowed ’twarn’t proper game
To bob behind for a grave-yard lot; so Pete
swum on the same,
”—Swum on the same, though we come to see
that he didn’t act quite right.
For he grew as thin’s a belayin’ pin on that gol-
durned appetite.
“And we couldn’t figger the secret out, though
the second mate was firm
That stowed ’tween decks in the shark’s insides
was a bastin’ big tape-worm.
“As we didn’t have no vermifuge we could only
mourn for Pete,
And steal salt hoss when the mate wam’t round,
and give him lots to eat.
“But at last he rolled his glassy eyes and give
an awful chum,
And turned his belly up to view and drifted off
astern.
“He rolled and sogged on a logy swell like a
nut-cake dropped in fat,
And it ’peared to all there was suthin’ wrong
with the shark we was lookin’ at.
“So the old man ordered the gig crew up, and
the bos’n piped a tune,
And away we sploshed with the mate ahead
a-grippin’ a big harpoon.
“He slung the thing when we drew abreast and
we hacked like all-possessed;
But the shark was sleepin’ sound, you bet, for
we never broke his rest.
”—We never broke his peaceful snooze, though
plunk to the eyelet head
Went rippin’ in that big harpoon,—for, you see,
the shark was dead.
“And the old man ordered an ortopsy, for the
thing seemed mighty queer
That an able-bodied, hearty shark was deader’n
a door-knob here.
“So the mate was medical ’xaminer, and he
straddled the critter’s back
And laid him open from deck to keel with one
almighty whack.
“Now listen close while I tell the rest, for this is
the story’s peth,
—You may take my nob for a scuttle-butt if
the shark warn’t starved to death.
“Starved to death, though the sea was full of
the fattest kind of fish,
—Starved, though a seaman plump and sound
had tumbled in his dish,
”—Starved though he had in his gorged insides
I’ll bet a hundredweight
Of every kind of a floating thing from codfish
down to bait.
“And this was how: He’d spied, we judged, an
empty cask afloat,
And bein’ a glutten he grabbed the thing and
tucked it down his throat.
“The cask, we found, had an open end—the
bottom was good and stout
—The shark had swallowed the whole end fust
—the open end was out.
“And ev’ry mossel the critter et was scooped by
the cask inside;
His vittles failed to reach the spot, and so the
poor shark died.”
This is a sample of weird, wild yarns the marin-
ers relate
Under the spur of a glass of grog in a Prohibi-
tion State.
The foam bells tinkle at gilded prow
—There’s a creamy wake to the far horizon.
And she tiptoes along with a New York bow
To the curt’sying waves, and we’ll all allow,
She’s the daintiest yacht we have set our eyes
on.
While sneaking after, in grimy shame,
Rolls tops’l schooner, the “Puddentame.”
On the rocking surge swings the millionaire,
And about him splendor and music and
laughter;
The glint of jewels and ladies fair;
Jollity throned, and Old King Care
Drowned in the brine and dragging after.
But the billows lift and toss the same
Old Cap’n Nutter in the “Puddentame.”
Under the gloom of the Porcupines,
In the gleam of the lights of the summer city,
In a tapestried cabin the rich man dines,
And toasts his friends in his bubbling wines,
While the repartee and the careless ditty
Float from the lips of squire and dame
To Cap’n Nutter of the “Puddentame.”
And the old man munches his bread and cheese
In the gloom and grime of his little cuddy;
—Through the mirk of the dusty deadlight sees
This riot of riches; then on his knees
—This sea-stained, warped old fuddy-duddy—
He prays for their souls in the Saviour’s
name,
—-Does Cap’n Nutter of the u Puddentame.
And they?—Why, they neither know nor care
That the honest chap has knelt and pleaded.
For just at the edge of the dazzling glare
From the rocking yacht of the millionaire,
The old craft swings and sways unheeded.
Yet who’ll sleep better, jaded Fame
Or Cap’n Nutter of the “Puddentame”?
We’ve gazed with resignation on the passing of
the auk,
Nor care a continental for the legendary rok;
And the dodo and the bison and the ornith-o-
rhyn-chus
May go and yet their passing brings no shade of
woe to us.
We entertain no sorrow that the megatherium
Forever and forever is departed, dead and
dumb:
But a woe that hovers o ’er us brings a keen and
bitter pain
As we weep to see the lobster vanish off the
coast of Maine.
Oh, dear crustacean dainty of the dodge-holes
of the sea,
I tune my lute in minor in a threnody for thee.
You’ve been the nation’s martyr and ’twas wrong
to treat you so,
And you may not think we love you; yet we
hate to see you go.
We’ve given you the blazes and hot-potted you,
and yet
We’ve loved you better martyred than when
living, now you bet.
You have no ears to listen, so, alas, we can’t
explain
The sorrow that you bring us as you leave the
coast of Maine.
Do you fail to mark our feeling as we bitterly
deplore
The passing of the hero of the dinner at the
shore?
Ah, what’s the use of living if you also can’t
survive
Until you die to furnish us the joy of one
“broiled live”?
And what can e ’er supplant you as a cold dish
on the side?
Or what assuage our longings when to salads
you’re denied?
Or what can furnish thunder to the legislative
brain
When ruthless Fate has swept you from the rocky
coast of Maine?
I see, and sigh in seeing, in some distant, future
age
Your varnished shell reposing under glass upon
a stage,
The while some pundit lectures on the curios of
the past,
And dainty ladies shudder as they gaze on you
aghast.
And all the folks that listen will wonder vaguely
at
The fact that once lived heathen who could eat
a Thing like that.
Ah, that’s the fate you’re facing—but laments
are all in vain
—Tell the dodo that you saw us when you
lived down here in Maine.
She wrote to her daddy in Portland, Maine, from
out in Denver, Col.,
And she wrote, alas, despondently that life had
commenced to pall;
And this was a woful, woful case, for she was
a six months’ bride
Who was won and wed in the State of Maine by
the side of the bounding tide.
And ah, alack, she was writing back that she
longed for Portland, Maine,
Till oh, her feelings had been that wrenched she
could hardly stand the strain!
Though her hubby dear was still sincere, she
sighed the livelong day
For a good old sniff of the sewers and salt from
the breast of Casco bay.
And she wrote she sighed, and she said she’d
cried, and her appetite fell off,
And she’d grown as thin’s a belaying-pin, with a
terrible hacking cough;
And she sort of hinted that pretty soon she’d
start on a reckless scoot
And hook for her home in Portland, Maine, by
the very shortest route.
But her daddy dear was a man of sense, and he
handles fish wholesale,
And he sat and fanned himself awhile with a
big broad codfish tail;
And he recollected the way he felt when he
dwelt in the World’s Fair whirl.
He slapped his head. “By hake,” he said, “I
know what ails that girl.”
And he went to a ten-cord pile of cod and he
pulled the biggest out,
A jib-shaped critter, broad’s a sail,—three feet
from tail to snout.
And he pasted a sheet of postage stamps from
snout clear down to tail,
Put on a quick delivery stamp, and sent the cod
by mail.
She smelled it a-coming two blocks off on the
top of the postman’s pack;
She rushed to meet him, and scared him blind by
climbing the poor man’s back.
But she got the fish, hit out a hunk, ate postage
stamps and all,
And a happy wife in a happy home lives out in
Denver, Col.
Blast from the winter. Wrack-wood and splinter
Adrift in the smother of roaring lee shore:
And a blunt-nosed old coaster; some ancient
sea-wagon,
Sweeps in from the fog no more—no more,
Rolls in from the sea no more.
Bricks make her load and New York her destin-
ation.
(Dern yer hide, ye snoozer, keep a-pumping
there, I say!)
Bricks for a cargo and she leaks like thundera-
tion,
And the gulls a-trailin’ after like the buzzards
sniffin’ prey!
Pump away!
And ev’ry brick a-soakin’ in her innards growls
and grates;
She hesitates—she balks and waits,
And holy hawse-pipe, how she hates
To leave Penobscot Bay!
Pounce! On her bows leap the combers like
a tiger-cat,
(Lift ’er on the handle, there, you loafer,
pump away!)
Lurch! Reels her gait, and her sloshin’ scup-
pers hiccup at
The sight of drunken breakers fightin’ past
’er up the bay.
Pump, I say!
Oh, give her all the rotten sail her leary masts
will lug.
Ka-chig, ka-chug; her ugly mug
Rolls orkord as a driftin’ jug,
And so we slosh away.
Grub to last a week, a quadrant and an alma-
nick;
(Wag ’er there, you rascal, wag ’er lively
there, I say!)
Rotten are her sails and her hold a-roar with
shiftin’ brick,
—Ain’t we up ag’inst it if a norther comes
our way?
Pump, I say!
Stagger down, ye bloated drunkard, wheel and
take the starboard tack!
Ka-slup, ka-smack, now work ’er back,
Jest hear that old black canvas crack.
Ho! Davy Jones, hooray!
Black cordage tangled, dead features mangled,
Adrift in the smother of roaring lee shore.
And a blunt-nosed old coaster;
some broad-bellied wagon
Sweeps in from the sea no more
—Rolls in from the sea no more,
—no more.