Torpenhow
considered
for a minute.
Kipling - Poems
"No," said Dick, sharply, and the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old
chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not
a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing.
Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together
and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of the sea--
"Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you,
ladies of Spain. "
Dick turned uneasily on the sofa, for he could hear the bows of the
Barralong crashing into the green seas on her way to the Southern Cross.
Then came the chorus--
"We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors, We'll rant and
we'll roar across the salt seas, Until we take soundings in the Channel
of Old England From Ushant to Scilly 'tis forty-five leagues. "
"Thirty-five-thirty-five," said Dick, petulantly. "Don't tamper with
Holy Writ. Go on, Nilghai. "
"The first land we made it was called the Deadman," and they sang to the
end very vigourously.
"That would be a better song if her head were turned the other way--to
the Ushant light, for instance," said the Nilghai.
"Flinging his arms about like a mad windmill," said Torpenhow. "Give us
something else, Nilghai. You're in fine fog-horn form tonight. "
"Give us the 'Ganges Pilot'; you sang that in the square the night
before El-Maghrib. By the way, I wonder how many of the chorus are alive
tonight," said Dick.
Torpenhow considered for a minute. "By Jove! I believe only you and I.
Raynor, Vicery, and Deenes--all dead; Vincent caught smallpox in Cairo,
carried it here and died of it. Yes, only you and I and the Nilghai. "
"Umph! And yet the men here who've done their work in a well-warmed
studio all their lives, with a policeman at each corner, say that I
charge too much for my pictures. "
"They are buying your work, not your insurance policies, dear child,"
said the Nilghai.
"I gambled with one to get at the other. Don't preach. Go on with the
'Pilot. ' Where in the world did you get that song? "
"On a tombstone," said the Nilghai. "On a tombstone in a distant land. I
made it an accompaniment with heaps of base chords. "
"Oh, Vanity!
