Читать книгу I Heard a Sailor - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 12

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We heaved the body overboard—

The tenth man who had died:

Then gasping side by side

Askance each other eyed.

The sea was glass, the sky was brass—

The boat a white-hot grid

Beneath that brazen lid

As to the thwarts we slid

Each eyeing still the other, each

Knowing the other knew

The one thought of the two—

Who should heave over who?

Which of the twain left out of twelve

On that dead sea accurst

Should first give in and first

Fall to the fiend of thirst?

Which of the twain be left to heave

A corpse of skin and bone

O’erboard to sink like stone;

And then drop back alone

Yet living to the thwarts, alone

On blistering boards to lie

Unburied ’neath that sky

Of brass, eternally

Thirsting for bottomless long draughts

Of home-brewed bitter beer,

Icy and amber-clear ...

The barmaid holds so near,

So near the lips, then snatches back

Just as you stoop to drink,

And lets fall with a clink

And splash into the sink ...

When suddenly his eyes burned red:

He rose and with a cry

Plunged overboard, and I,

Who somehow could not die,

Was left—to come once more to port ...

And in my bed again

Heave over ten dead men

Night after night, and then

Watch jealously again while he

Dives headlong—mad to leap

With him into death’s deep

And everlasting sleep!