"We laid them aboard the larboard side-- With hey! with ho! for and a nonny no! And we threw them into the sea so wide, And alongst the Coast of Barbary." _The Sailor's Onely Delight_. My father, checked in the midst, or rather at the outset, of a panegyric upon love, could not rest until he had found an ear into which to deliver it; but that same evening, after the moon had risen, drew Nat aside on the poop, and discharged the whole harangue upon him; the result being that the dear lad, who already fancied himself another Rudel in quest of the Lady of Tripoli, spent the next two days in composing these verses, the only ones (to my knowledge) ever finished by him: NAT FIENNES' SONG TO THE UNDISCOVERED LADY. "Thou, thou, that art My port, my refuge, and my goal, I have no chart, No compass but a heart Trembling t'ward thee and to no other pole. "My star! Adrift On seas that well-nigh overwhelm, Still when they lift I strain toward the rift, And steer, and hold my courage to the helm. "With ivory comb, Daylong thou dalliest dreaming where The rainbow foam Enisles thy murmuring home: Home too for me, though I behold it ne'er! "Yet when the bird Is tired, and each little wave, Aloft is heard A call, reminds thee gird Thy robe and climb to where the summits rave: "Yea, to the white Lone sea-mark shaken on the verge-- 'What of the night?' Ah, climb--ah, lift the light! Ah, lamp thy lover labouring in the surge! "Fray'd rope, burst sail, Drench'd wing, as moth toward the spark-- I fetch, I fail, Glad only that the gale Breaks not my faith upon the brutal dark. "Be it frost or fire, Thy bosom, I believed it warm: I did aspire For that, and my desire-- Burn thou or freeze--fought thro' and beat the storm. "Thou, thou, that art My sole salvation, fixed, afar, I have no chart, No compass but a heart Hungry for thee and for no other star." "Humph!" said I, by way of criticism, when these verses were shown to me. "Where be the mackerel lines, Captain Jo? There's too much love-talk aboard this ship of yours." "Mackerel?" said Captain Jo. "Why, where's your bait?" "You shall lend me an inch off your pipe-stem," said I, and, to tease Nat, began to hum the senseless old song: "She has ta'en a siller wand An' gi'en strokes three, An' chang'd my sister Masery To a mack'rel of the sea. And every Saturday at noon The mack'rel comes to me, An' she takes my laily head An' lays it on her knee, An' kames it wi' a kame o' pearl, An' washes it i' the sea--"