Oh, swingin' cross the Bay Go eighty sail of seiners, And every blessed one of them a-driving to her rail! There's a gale upon the waters and there's foam upon the sea, And looking out the window is a dark-eyed girl for me, And driving her for Gloucester, maybe we don't know What the little ones are thinking when the mother looks out so. Oh, the children in the cradle and the wife's eyes out to sea, The husband at the helm and looking westerly-- When you get to thinking that way, don't it make your heart's blood foam? Be sure it does--so here's a health to those we love at home. West half no'the and drive her, we're abreast now of Cape Sable, It's an everlasting hurricane, but here's the craft that's able-- When you get to thinking that way, don't it make your heart's blood foam? Be sure it does--so here's a health to those we love at home. Oh, the roar of shoaling waters and the awful, awful sea, Busted shrouds and parting cables, and the white death on our lee; Oh, the black, black night on Georges when eight score men were lost-- Were ye there, ye men of Gloucester? Aye, ye were--and tossed Like chips upon the water were your little craft that night, Driving, swearing, calling out, but ne'er a call of fright. So knowing ye for what ye are, ye masters of the sea, Here's to ye, Gloucester fishermen, a health to ye from me. And here's to it that once again We'll trawl and seine and race again; Here's to us that's living and to them that's gone before; And when to us the Lord says, 'Come!' We'll bow our heads, 'His will be done,' And all together let us go beneath the ocean's roar." I never again expect to hear a sea song sung as Tom O'Donnell sang it then, his beard still wet with the spray and his eyes glowing like coal-fire. And the voice of him! He must have been heard in half of Gloucester that night. He made the table quiver. And when they all rose with glasses raised and sang the last lines again: "And here's to it that once again We'll trawl and seine and race again; Here's to us that's living and to them that's gone before; And when to us the Lord says, 'Come!' We'll bow our heads, 'His will be done,' And all together we shall go beneath the ocean's roar----" any stranger hearing and seeing might have understood why it was that their crews were ready to follow these men to death. "The like of you, Tom O'Donnell, never sailed the sea," said Patsie Oddie when they had got the last ro-o-ar--"even the young ladies come in off the street to hear you better."