Bramleykite Pilling's comments on "Derelict," from the standpoint of scientific criticism, seem to me to be beyond any sort of reproach. He is evidently an actual, real water sailor who learned his nautics within the smell of bilgewater and the open sea. My own education as an able seaman was gained from years of youthful deep study of dime-novel sea yarns by Ned Buntline, Fenimore Cooper, Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., Billy Bowline, and other masters of the sea in libraries. I have, however, made two ocean trips from Norfolk to New York, time 23 hours. On both occasions I went sound asleep at the end of the first hour and woke up at the end of twenty-third hour. Under such circumstances I may have missed many important details of realism. I have also visited often the tomb of that fine old patriot-pirate and ex-Alderman, Dominique You, in the old French cemetery at New Orleans. As chief gunner for Jean Lafitte, he was some pirate; as chief artilleryman for Gen. Andrew Jackson at the battle of New Orleans, he was some patriot. I feel stronger in my piracy than in my seamanship. I love criticism--especially of poetry. If there is a single verse, or, mayhap, one line, of "Derelict" that will hold, without leaking, anything of a specific gravity heavier than moonshine, it would surprise me. But it _seems_ to, when it is adopted as a "real chanty"--and that's the test, that it "seems." Y. E. A. Transcriber's Note: The book has a Pocket with 7 pieces of paper which are facsimiles noted in the text. The music for _A Piratical Ballad_ has been transcribed and is available as a _Finale_ .mus file, a pdf file, and a midi file. End of Project Gutenberg's The Dead Men's Song, by Champion Ingraham Hitchcock