Explore "Screw-Guns" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool, / I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule, / With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets / It's only the pick of the Army / that handles the dear little pets -- 'Tss! 'Tss! / For you all love the screw-guns -- the screw-guns they all love you! / So when we call round with a few guns, / o' course you will know what to do -- hoo! hoo! / Jest send in your Chief an' surrender -- / it's worse if you fights or you runs: / You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees, / but you don't get away from the guns!
They sends us along where the roads are, but mostly we goes where they ain't: / We'd climb up the side of a sign-board an' trust to the stick o' the paint: / We've chivied the Naga an' Looshai, we've give the Afreedeeman fits, / For we fancies ourselves at two thousand, / we guns that are built in two bits -- 'Tss! 'Tss! / For you all love the screw-guns . . .