way of trade. Her mother, an old farmer’s wife, Required a drug to save her life. ‘At once, my dear, at once,’ I said, Patted the child upon the head, Bade her be still a loving daughter, And filled the bottle up with water.’

p. 71

‘Well, and the mother?’ Robin cried.

‘O she!’ said Ben—‘I think she died.’

‘Battle and blood, death and disease, Upon the tainted Tropic seas— The attendant sharks that chew the cud— The abhorred scuppers spouting blood— The untended dead, the Tropic sun— The thunder of the murderous gun— p. 72The cut-throat crew—the Captain’s curse— The tempest blustering worse and worse— These have I known and these can stand, But you—I settle out of hand!’

p. 72

Out flashed the cutlass, down went Ben Dead and rotten, there and then.

p. 73II THE BUILDER’S DOOM

p. 73

In eighteen-twenty Deacon Thin Feu’d the land and fenced it in, And laid his broad foundations down About a furlong out of town.

Early and late the work went on. The carts were toiling ere the dawn; The mason whistled, the hodman sang; Early and late the trowels rang; And Thin himself came day by day To push the work in every way. An artful builder, patent king Of all the local building ring, Who was there like him in the quarter For mortifying brick and mortar, Or pocketing the odd piastre By substituting lath and plaster? With plan and two-foot rule in hand, He by the foreman took his stand, p. 74With boisterous voice, with eagle glance To stamp upon extravagance. For thrift of bricks and greed of guilders, He was the Buonaparte of Builders.

p. 74

The foreman, a desponding creature, Demurred to here and there a feature: ‘For surely, sir—with your permeession— Bricks here, sir, in the main parteetion. . . . ’ The builder goggled, gulped, and stared, The foreman’s services were spared. Thin would not count among his minions A man of Wesleyan opinions.

‘Money is money,’ so he said. ‘Crescents are crescents, trade is trade. Pharaohs and emperors in their seasons Built, I believe, for 

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