Threat of famine, grisly spectre, makes us look a little blue; But our commonwealth’s protector, launching forth in bark canoe, Quits the precincts of the island, marches at a spanking pace, Up-hill, down-hill, swamp and dry land, perfect Nimrod in the chase. Hippopotamus stupendous to your prowess falls a prey. Ministers of grace defend us! you are spirited away. Lo! proverbially fickle, Fortune knocks you from your perch, Leaves you in a pretty pickle, or, as you may say, the lurch. Meditating in your prison, through the darkling stilly night, Ere red Phoebus has arisen you have perpetrated flight: Swift rejoin the little party by Swahili sore oppressed; Juma then is in the cart, he gets a bullet in the chest. Pardon slight inaccuracy, due to exigence of rhyme; Frenzied poet, going pace, imagines only the sublime. Be pedestrian and pedantic when you’re patronizing prose, Spur your Pegasus quite frantic when a poem you compose. To return from this diversion, and to make long story short, After enemy’s dispersion you evacuated fort; Made a bee-line for the village, situated on a hill, Scooped the products of their tillage, bloodless coup, resistance nil. Expediting preparations for strategic move in rear, ’Mid poor females’ ululations, most distressing to the ear-- What makes all your pulses throb? oh! what sets all your nerves athrill? ’Tis shikari Wanderobbo, or, to use his alias, Bill. Pale with rage and indignation (metaphorically pale), Billy tells of spoliation, thieves his property assail. Tartar like the bold Cambuscan (Chaucer left his tale half-told), Juma digs up every tusk and Bill is absolutely sold. Now behold you on your mettle; now momentous hour has struck, You in most pugnacious fettle sally forth to try your luck; Meet marauders by the river, fall on them like bolt from blue, Crying ’Stand and eke deliver, or I’ll run you through and through!’ (Note: that speech, correct in diction, is not quite correct in fact; ’Tis a literary fiction, managed with consummate tact. So the other classic writers, Livy and Thucydides, Decorate the lips of fighters with sublime apostrophes.) Though the words were never uttered, pish! it matters not a jot; Like March hares the scoundrels scuttered, dropping burdens on the spot; After years of patient waiting, Bill regains his ownest own, And with ecstasy gyrating, bellows till he’s fairly blown. You with prescient acumen see that all is not O.K.; You alas! have very few men, Juma has a vast array; Yet while danger round you thickens, lo! you neither quail nor quake; Though you wonder how the dickens you are going to take the cake.