Out from the docks we shot Into the screaming night; We steered by lightning's light; The paddles beat a mad tattoo;
The gridded walking-beam Pumped up, pumped down, Against the misty gleam; Faster and faster jets the stand-pipes’ steam.
And the white water whirls Astern in phosphorescent whorls — It swirls And then leads backward green with light
Of streaming foam across the velvet night. By the last lightning flare, That must be Sumter, bare Against a torn cloud like a rag;
But now the wind begins to flag, And as it fails the engines lag; Then comes a low hail from the mast “Avast” —
Again the engines slow — Then stop — And we were drifting like a log As silent as a drowned corpse
In the sea-set tide, Muffled in dripping fog. No word from all the ship — She seemed asleep —
Only the cluck of water and the feel Of grim Atlantic rollers at the keel, Nuzzling two fathoms deep; They made her heel.
The porpoise played about our copper lip. It seemed as if they were The only living things in all that blur, And we —
The only ship upon an ancient sea. When suddenly a laugh broke through the spell; It was so near Our pulses lapsed a heart-beat,
Struck with fear. The curtains of the fog were blown apart; Stark in the sallow moonlight's metal day, The white decks of a Yankee frigate lay.
I saw the glint of moonlight on her bell; She was not twenty fathoms length away. A man's face leaped out in the cherry glow Of match flame in the hands he cupped
About the pipe whose curling wreaths he supped. “Clang!” like a fireman's gong Our engine signals rang; The paddles thrashed into a frothy song;
Five ship's lengths we had forged along Before their bugles sang. We had ten long lengths on them Before their ship began to swerve.
The rabid screw was frothing at her stern; But I could feel the verve Of our blithe timbers tremble; every nerve Of our good race-horse ship
For open water seemed to yearn. That was a Titan's race; The answering rockets snaked it down the coast, Dying like scarlet worms
Among the fog-wreaths; but we gained, And when her flaming cannon stabbed the mist They thundered at our ghost. So we were gone,
With cotton in our furnace, Once the aft-stacks flared, And then we plied pitch-pine Dampened with turpentine,
Until the black sea glared — But we had gone — Over the world's round shoulder Thrust the dawn,
Their ugly, black masts dipping it hull down. Three days the paddles beat while we drove on! And I had won; For on the fourth day as I sat
In the black coffin-shadow of a boat, The burning decks a-wash with lime-white sun, I saw the graybeard lookout swell his throat And utter forth a glad and bronze hurrah,
“Land Ho!” he cried — We lined the windward side To cheer the washing palm tops of Nassau.
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