By this time, all sense of verbal restraint had been lost, and the club (if we must be candid) concluded its session by chanting, not without enjoyment, its own sea chantey, which runs as follows:--
I shipped aboard a galleass In a brig whereof men brag, But lying on my palliass My spirits began to sag.
I heard the starboard steward Singing abaft the poop; He lewdly sang to looard And sleep fled from the sloop.
"The grog slops over the fiddles With the violins of the gale: Two bitts are on the quarterdeck, The seamen grouse and quail.
"The anchor has been catted, The timid ratlines flee, Careening and carousing She yaws upon the sea.
"The skipper lies in the scupper, The barque is lost in the bight; The bosun calls for a basin-- This is a terrible night.
"The wenches man the winches, The donkey men all bray--" ... I hankered to be anchored In safety in the bay!
That wild and engaging region known as the Salamis Estates has surprising enchantments for the wanderer. Strolling bushrangers, if they escape being pelleted with lead by the enthusiastic rabbit hunters who bang suddenly among thickets, will find many vistas of loveliness. All summer long we are imprisoned in foliage, locked up in a leafy embrace. But when the leaves have shredded away and the solid barriers of green stand revealed as only thin fringes of easily penetrable woodland, the eye moves with surprise over these wide reaches of colour and freedom. Beyond the old ruined farmhouse past the gnarled and rheumatic apple tree is that dimpled path that runs across fields, the short cut down to the harbour. The stiff frozen plumes of ghostly goldenrod stand up pale and powdery along the way. How many tints of brown and fawn and buff in the withered grasses--some as feathery and translucent as a gauze scarf, as nebulous as those veilings Robin Herrick was so fond of--his mention of them gives an odd connotation to a modern reader--
So looks Anthea, when in bed she lyes, Orecome, or halfe betray'd by Tiffanies.
Our fields now have the rich, tawny colour of a panther's hide. Along the little path are scattered sumac leaves, dark scarlet. It is as though Summer had been wounded by the hunter Jack Frost, and had crept away down that secret track, leaving a trail of bloodstains behind her.