They rang and blew the sealers' call--the poaching cry o' the sea-- And they raised the Baltic out of the mist, and an angry ship was she: And blind they groped through the whirling white, and blind to the bay again, Till they heard the creak of the Stralsund's boom and the clank of her mooring-chain. They laid them down by bitt and boat, their pistols in their belts, And: "Will you fight for it, Reuben Paine, or will you share the pelts?" A dog-toothed laugh laughed Reuben Paine, and bared his flenching knife. "Yea, skin for skin, and all that he hath a man will give for his life; But I've six thousand skins below, and Yeddo Port to see, And there's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-Three. So go in peace to the naked seas with empty holds to fill, And I'll be good to your seal this catch, as many as I shall kill." Answered the snap of a closing lock and the jar of a gun-butt slid, But the tender fog shut fold on fold to hide the wrong they did. The weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak, And the flame-spurts pale ran down the rail as the sealing-rifles spoke. The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free, (Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!) The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue, But three were down on the Baltic's deck and two of the Stralsund's crew. An arm's length out and overside the banked fog held them bound; But, as they heard or groan or word, they fired at the sound. For one cried out on the name of God, and one to have him cease; And the questing volley found them both and bade them hold their peace. And one called out on a heathen joss and one on the Virgin's Name; And the schooling bullet leaped across and showed them whence they came. And in the waiting silences the rudder whined beneath, And each man drew his watchful breath slow taken 'tween the teeth-- Trigger and ear and eye acock, knit brow and hard-drawn lips-- Bracing his feet by chock and cleat for the rolling of the ships: Till they heard the cough of a wounded man that fought in the fog for breath, Till they heard the torment of Reuben Paine that wailed upon his death: "The tides they'll go through Fundy Race but I'll go never more And see the hogs from ebb-tide mark turn scampering back to shore. No more I'll see the trawlers drift below the Bass Rock ground, Or watch the tall Fall steamer lights tear blazing up the Sound. Sorrow is me, in a lonely sea and a sinful fight I fall, But if there's law o' God or man you'll swing for it yet, Tom Hall!"