The Bat, the Bush, and the Duck

A bush, duck, and bat, having found that in trade, / Confined to their country, small profits were made, / Into partnership enter'd to traffic abroad, / Their purse, held in common, well guarded from fraud. / Their factors and agents, these trading allies / Employ'd where they needed, as cautious as wise: / Their journals and ledgers, exact and discreet, / Recorded by items expense and receipt. / All throve, till an argosy, on its way home, / With a cargo worth more than their capital sum, / In attempting to pass through a dangerous strait, / Went down with its passengers, sailors, and freight, / To enrich those enormous and miserly stores, / From Tartarus distant but very few doors. / Regret was a thing which the firm could but feel; / Regret was the thing they were slow to reveal; / For the least of a merchant well knows that the weal / Of his credit requires him his loss to conceal. / But that which our trio unluckily suffer'd / Allow'd no repair, and of course was discover'd. / No money nor credit, 'twas plain to be seen / Their heads were now threaten'd with bonnets of green; [1] / And, the facts of the case being everywhere known, / No mortal would open his purse with a loan. / Debts, bailiffs, and lawsuits, and creditors gruff, / At the crack of day knocking, / (Importunity shocking! ) / Our trio kept busy enough. / The bush, ever ready and on the alert, / Now caught all the people it could by the skirt: -- / 'Pray, sir, be so good as to tell, if you please, / If you know whereabout the old villanous seas / Have hid all our goods which they stole t' other night. / The diver, to seek them, went down out of sight. / The bat didn't venture abroad in the day, / And thus of the bailiffs kept out of the way.

[1]: _With bonnets of green._ -- Such as insolvent debtors were anciently required to wear, in France, after making cession of their effects, in order to escape imprisonment. -- Translator. The custom also prevailed in Italy.