"For a month we'd neither wittles nor drink,
Till a-hungary we did feel,

So we drawed a lot, and accordin' shot
The captain for our meal.

"The next lot fell to the Nancy's mate,
And delicate dish he made;

Then our appetite with the midshipmite
We seven survivors stayed.

"And then we murdered the bo'sun tight,
And he much resembled pig;

Then we wittled free, did the cook and me,
On the crew of the captain's gig.

"Then only the cook and me was left,
And the delicate question 'which

Of us two goes to the kettle?' arose
And we argued it out as sich.

"For I loved that cook as a brother, I did,

And the cook he worshipped me;

But we'd both be blowed if we'd either be stowed

In the other chap's hold, you see.

'I'll be eat if you dines off me,' says Tom, 'Yes, that,' says I, 'you'll be!'

'I'm boiled if I die, my friend,' quoth I, And 'Exactly so!' quoth he.

"Says he, 'Dear James, to murder me
Were a foolish thing to do,

For don't you see that you can't cook me,
While I can and will-cook you?'

"So he boils the water and takes the salt

And the pepper in portions true

(Which he never forgot), and some chopped

shalot,

And some sage and parsley, too.

""Come here,' says he, with proper pride,

Which his smiling features tell,

"Twill soothing be if I let you see,

How extremely nice you'll smell.'

"And he stirred it round and round and round And he sniffed at the foaming froth;

When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals

In the scum of the boiling broth.

"And I eat that cook in a week or less,

And as I eating be

The last of his chops, why, I almost drops, For a vessel in sight I see.

"And I never grieve, and I never smile, And I never larf nor play

But I sit and croak, and a single joke

I have which is to say;

"Oh, I am a cook, and a captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain's gig!"

WILLIAM S. GILBERT

SAUL

I

AID Abner. "At last thou art come. Ere I tell, ere thou speak,

SAID

Kiss my cheek, wish me well." Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek,

And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy

countenance sent,

Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from

his tent

Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet,

Shall our lips with the honey be bright, with the water be wet.

For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,

Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise,

To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,

And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks

back upon life.

II

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved, God's child with his dew

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue

Just broken to twine round thy harp strings, as if no wild heat

Were now raging to torture the desert."

Then I, as was meet,

III

Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose to my feet,

And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;

I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped;

Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,

That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on

Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,

And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid