It was the sealer Northern Light, to the Smoky Seas she bore. With a stovepipe stuck from a starboard port and the Russian flag at her fore. (Baltic, Stralsund, and Northern Light--oh! they were birds of a feather-- Slipping away to the Smoky Seas, three seal-thieves together!) And at last she came to a sandy cove and the Baltic lay therein, But her men were up with the herding seal to drive and club and skin. There were fifteen hundred skins abeach, cool pelt and proper fur, When the Northern Light drove into the bight and the sea-mist drove with her. The Baltic called her men and weighed--she could not choose but run-- For a stovepipe seen through the closing mist, it shows like a four-inch gun (And loss it is that is sad as death to lose both trip and ship And lie for a rotting contraband on Vladivostock slip). She turned and dived in the sea-smother as a rabbit dives in the whins, And the Northern Light sent up her boats to steal the stolen skins. They had not brought a load to side or slid their hatches clear, When they were aware of a sloop-of-war, ghost-white and very near. Her flag she showed, and her guns she showed--three of them, black, abeam, And a funnel white with the crusted salt, but never a show of steam. There was no time to man the brakes, they knocked the shackle free, And the Northern Light stood out again, goose-winged to open sea. (For life it is that is worse than death, by force of Russian law To work in the mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw!) They had not run a mile from shore--they heard no shots behind-- When the skipper smote his hand on his thigh and threw her up in the wind: "Bluffed--raised out on a bluff," said he, "for if my name's Tom Hall, You must set a thief to catch a thief--and a thief has caught us all! By every butt in Oregon and every spar in Maine, The hand that spilled the wind from her sail was the hand of Reuben Paine! He has rigged and trigged her with paint and spar, and, faith, he has faked her well-- But I'd know the Stralsund's deckhouse yet from here to the booms o' Hell. Oh, once we ha' met at Baltimore, and twice on Boston pier, But the sickest day for you, Reuben Paine, was the day that you came here-- The day that you came here, my lad, to scare us from our seal With your funnel made o' your painted cloth, and your guns o' rotten deal! Ring and blow for the Baltic now, and head her back to the bay, For we'll come into the game again with a double deck to play!"