Travellers Tale
It was confusing, sir—
All those damned cherubs hanging in the air
Tangling their wings against the mizzen-mast;
And then the mermaids—trouble enough we had,
Such crowds of creatures tumbling through the waves,
The crew agape in round astonishment.
And Triton always blowing up somewhere
Sounding his conch-shell trumpet-like at us;
And whales that stretched the length of continents
And took us twenty days to sail around.
And all the scrolls, sir, mixed up with the clouds,
They made the voyage very troublesome—
The same again, sir, thank you very much.
You know the pictures then, the maps and prints?
Those were the crowded days for voyaging,
The things I’ve seen I doubt if you’d believe,
But this here jack-knife proves I’ve been around—
It’s slit near thirty heathen at the throat,
You’ll know, to feel the edge, sir.
That there’s Columbus at the Isle of Pearls,
I and Columbus, sir, we stride the deck,
His name in letters written round his head.
The waves like that, all fixed and ribbed with light,
The naked Indians in the foreground here
Are just as I remember.
Thank you, sir.
And not a space unfilled. Three-masters those,
I just forget
How they got mixed up with the Isle of Pearls,
Boarding and gunning with their sails square-rigged
And puffs of smoke that, staying in the air,
Blot out a toppling Spaniard but his leg.
Aye, that’s the Gold Lion, too,
With ten dead Indians swinging at the mast.
De Bry’s the fellow, sir, that done the prints
And got it very accurate.
I said to him
“Put in a cherub, Will, to blow the wind,”
And showed him how to draw the mermaids so,
And very lifelike, too.
Well, thank you, sir.
Yes, the first turning, thirty paces down,
That’s the best way. You’ll not mistake it, sir.
One for the road? Your health, then. Down the hatch.