The Derelict - Abney Park

The mate was fixed with the bo’sun’s pike

And the bo’sun brained with a marlin-spike

Cookie’s throat was marked belike

It had been gripped by fingers ten

And there they lay, all good dead men

Like break o' day in a boozin' den

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of the whole ship’s list

Dead and bedamned and the rest gone whist

The skipper lay with his nob in gore

Where the scullion’s axe his cheek had shore

And the scullion he’d been stabbed times four

And there they lay, and the soggy skies

Dripped all day long up staring eyes

By murk sunset and by foul sunrise--

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark

Ten of the crew with a murder mark

'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead

Or a yawning hole in a battered head

And the scupper’s a-glut with a rotting red

And there they lay, aye, damn me eyes

Their lookouts clapped on Paradise

And their souls gone just as contrariwise--

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em good and true

Every man-jack could 'a sailed with Old Pew

There was just no chest full of Spanish gold

With a ton of plate in the middle hold

The cabins a riot of loot untold--

And there they lay that took the plum

With sightless glare and lips struck dumb

While we shared all by the rule of thumb--

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

More was seen through a stern light screen

Charting, no doubt, where a woman had been

A flimsy shift on a bunkered cot

With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot

And the lace stiff dry with a purplish blot--

Oh, was she a wench, some shuddering maid

That dared the knife and took the blade

By God, she was tough for a plucky jade--

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s chest

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the Devil had done for the rest

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!

Wrapped them all in the mainsail tight

Twice ten turns of a hawser’s bight

And we heaved them over and out of sight

With a yo-heave-ho and a fare-ye-well

A sudden plunge in a sullen swell

Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell--

Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!