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THE REEFS
by
Crosbie Garstin
[Isles Of Scilly]
Who sank the ‘Primo’?
“I,” said the Seven Stones, “And then ate her bones.
She crashed bows on, with her sails in tatters.
I broke her up as a mallet shatters
An egg. She didn’t take long to vanish,
I heard her people praying in Spanish.
In the boiling lather of surf that draped me,
Only a single dago escaped me.
I sank the ‘Primo’.”
Who sank the ‘Sussex’?
“I,” said the Seal, “I ripped her keel.
She came from Baltimore carrying cattle,
And oh but I laughed to see ‘em battle
For shore, the blockheads, mooing and blowing,
With whirlpools sucking and currents towing them back.
They sank where the grey rock cod is,
The sea was thick with their drifting bodies.
I sank the ‘Sussex’.”
Who sank the ‘Association’?
“I,” said the Gillstone, “She sank like a millstone.
A ship o’ the Line, a huge first-rater;
I sank the ‘Eagle’ and ‘Romney’ later
The cabin-boy, who was born in a hovel,
Lord High Admiral Cloudesley Shovel,
Him I drowned,and his captains round him,
A woman buried him where she found him
Out on the sands with the sea-birds wailing,
A Lord High Admiral home from sailing
I sank the ‘Association’.”
Who sank the ‘Schiller’?
“I,” said the Retarrier, “She challenged my barrier.
As big as a church and as tall as a steeple,
Crammed with specie and mails and people,
Into my jaws the night-fogs drove her,
She struck, and crumpled, and then heeled over.
Her boats were swamped as she rolled and crushed them
The women shrieked till the black seas hushed them
I drowned three hundred as easy as winking,
Which wasn’t a bad night’s work I’m thinking.
I sank the ‘Schiller’.”
Then the grim rocks that stand hard about Scilly -
Buccaboo, Great Smith, Dropnose, and little Granilly
The Barrel of butter, Dropnose and Hell-weather
Started to boast of their conquests together.
Of drowned men and gallant tall vessels laid low,
While gulls wheeled about them like flurries of snow
And green combers romped at them smashing in thunder,
Gurgling and booming in caverns down under.
Sending their diamond drops flying in showers,
“Oh!” said the reefs, “What a business is ours!
Since saints in coracles paddled from Erin,
(Fishing our waters for sinners and herrin’)
And purple-sailed tirenes of Hamlico came
To the Islands of Tin, we’ve played at the game.
We shattered the galleys of conquering Rome,
The galleons of Philip, that scudded for home.
(The sea-molluscs slime on their glittering gear),
We plundered the plundering French privateer.
We caught the great Indiaman head in the wind,
And gutted her hold of the treasures of Ind.
We broke the proud ships of His Majesty’s fleet,
(The bones of their seamen lie bleached at our feet)
And cloudy tea-clippers that raced from Canton,
Swept into our clutches and never went on.
Came steel leviathans mocking disaster
We scrapped them as fast - if anything faster.
So pick up your pilot and take a cross-bearing,
Sound us and chart us from Lion to Tearing,
And ring us with lighthouses, day-marks and buoys,
The gales are our hunters, the fogs our decoys.
We shall not go hungry, we grin, and we wait,
Black-fanged and foam drabbled, the wolves at the gate.” |
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