On the road to Mombas-a, With the _Black Prince_, day by day Rolling her tall taffrail under, 'Neath a sky o'ercast and gray. Take me back to good old Proctor's Where a man may quench his thirst, Where a purser with a shilling Needn't feel he is accursed By an ironclad owners' ship rule That her officers shouldn't drink-- _Anywhere_ the ringing glasses Merrily clink! clink! On the road to Mombas-a, Where the only drink is "tay," Where a thirst that is a wonder Burns the throat from day to day. Take me somewhere close to Rector's Where a man can get a crab, Where the blondined waves are tossing And every eye-glance is a stab, Where there's _froufrou_ of the _jupon_ And there's popping of the cork _Anywhere_ the men and women Snap their fingers at the stork. On the road to Mombas-a, Where e'en mermaids never play, Where to come would be a blunder Hunting hot birds and Roger. But lonesome out here? Never--with the sympathetic North Atlantic winds ever ready to roar you a grim dirge in your moments of melancholy contemplation of the inverted Dipper, with the gentle tropical breezes softly singing through the rigging notes of soothing cadence, with the lethal ocean billows ever leaping up the sides of the ship, foaming with the joy of what they would do to you if they once got you in their embrace! Lonesome? With the coming and the going of each day's sun gilding cloud-crests, silvering waves, setting you matchless scenes in color effect, some ravishing in their gorgeous splendor, some soft and tender of tone as the light in the eyes of the woman you worship, scenes beside which the most brilliant stage settings which metropolitans flock like sheep to see are pathetically paltry counterfeits. Lonesome? With a mighty, joyously bounding charger like the _Black Prince_ beneath your feet if not between your knees, gayly taking the tallest billows in his stride, whose ever steady pulse-beat bespeaks a soundness of wind and limb you can trust to land you well at the finish! Lonesome? Where privileged to descend into the very vitals of your charger and sit throughout the midnight watch, an awed listener to the throbs of the mighty heart that vitalizes his every function, while each vigorously thrusting piston, each smug, palm-rubbing eccentric, each somnolently nodding lever, drives deeper into your lay brain an overwhelming sense of pride in such of your kind as have had the genius to conceive, and such others as have had the skill and patience to perfect, the conversion of inert masses of crude metal into the magnificently powerful and obviously sentient entity that is bearing you! Lonesome? Skirting the coastline of Africa, a country whose potentates, from the Ptolemies to Tom Ryan, have never failed to make world history worth thinking about!