And now, my good friends, I've a fine opportunity To obfuscate you all by sea terms with impunity, And talking of "caulking," And "quarter-deck walking," "Fore and aft," And "abaft," "Hookers," "barkeys," and "craft," (At which Mr. Poole has so wickedly laught,) Of binnacles,--bilboes,--the boom call'd the spanker, The best bower cable,--the jib,--and sheet anchor; Of lower-deck guns,--and of broadsides and chases, Of taffrails and topsails, and splicing main-braces, And "Shiver my timbers!" and other odd phrases Employed by old pilots with hard-featured faces;-- Of the expletives sea-faring Gentlemen use, The allusions they make to the eyes of their crews;-- How the Sailors, too, swear, How they cherish their hair, And what very long pigtails a great many wear.-- But, Reader, I scorn it--the fact is, I fear, To be candid, I can't make these matters so clear As Marryat, or Cooper, or Captain Chamier, Or Sir E. Lytton Bulwer, who brought up the rear Of the "Nauticals," just at the end of the year Eighteen thirty-nine--(how Time flies!--Oh dear!)-- With a well-written preface, to make it appear That his play, the "Sea-Captain," 's by no means small beer; There!--"brought up the rear"--you see there's a mistake Which none of the authors I've mentioned would make, I ought to have said, that he "sail'd in their wake."-- So I'll merely observe, as the water grew rougher, The more my poor hero continued to suffer, Till the Sailors themselves cried, in pity, "Poor Buffer!" Still rougher it grew, And still harder it blew, And the thunder kick'd up such a halliballoo, That even the Skipper began to look blue; While the crew, who were few, Look'd very queer, too, And seem'd not to know what exactly to do, And they who'd the charge of them wrote in the logs, "Wind N.E.--blows a hurricane--rains cats and dogs." In short it soon grew to a tempest as rude as That Shakspeare describes near the "still vext Bermudas,"[17] When the winds, in their sport, Drove aside from its port The King's ship, with the whole Neapolitan Court, And swamp'd it to give "the King's Son, Ferdinand," a Soft moment or two with the Lady Miranda, While her Pa met the rest, and severely rebuked 'em For unhandsomely doing him out of his Dukedom. You don't want me, however, to paint you a Storm, As so many have done, and in colours so warm; Lord Byron, for instance, in manner facetious, Mr. Ainsworth more gravely,--see also Lucretius, --A writer who gave me no trifling vexation When a youngster at school on Dean Colet's foundation.-- Suffice it to say That the whole of that day, And the next, and the next, they were scudding away Quite out of their course, Propell'd by the force Of those flatulent folks known in Classical story as Aquilo, Libs, Notus, Auster, and Boreas, Driven quite at their mercy