The "Mary Gloster" by Rudyard Kipling — Read

I've paid for your sickest fancies; I've humoured your crackedest whim -- / Dick, it's your daddy, dying; you've got to listen to him! / Good for a fortnight, am I? The doctor told you? He lied. / I shall go under by morning, and -- Put that nurse outside. / 'Never seen death yet, Dickie? Well, now is your time to learn, / And you'll wish you held my record before it comes to your turn. / Not counting the Line and the Foundry, the yards and the village, too, / I've made myself and a million; but I'm damned if I made you. / Master at two-and-twenty, and married at twenty-three -- / Ten thousand men on the pay-roll, and forty freighters at sea! / Fifty years between 'em, and every year of it fight, / And now I'm Sir Anthony Gloster, dying, a baronite: / For I lunched with his Royal 'Ighness -- what was it the papers a-had? / "Not least of our merchant-princes. " Dickie, that's me, your dad! / _I_ didn't begin with askings. _I_ took my job and I stuck; / And I took the chances they wouldn't, an' now they're calling it luck. / Lord, what boats I've handled -- rotten and leaky and old! / Ran 'em, or -- opened the bilge-cock, precisely as I was told. / Grub that 'ud bind you crazy, and crews that 'ud turn you grey, / And a big fat lump of insurance to cover the risk on the way. / The others they dursn't do it; they said they valued their life / (They've served me since as skippers). _I_ went, and I took my wife. / Over the world I drove 'em, married at twenty-three, / And your mother saving the money and making a man of me.

_I_ was content to be master, but she said there was better behind; / She took the chances I wouldn't, and I followed your mother blind. / She egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me to clear the loan, / When we bought half shares in a cheap 'un and hoisted a flag of our own. / Patching and coaling on credit, and living the Lord knew how, / We started the Red Ox freighters -- we've eight-and-thirty now. / And those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights, / And we knew we were making our fortune, but she died in Macassar Straits -- / By the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank -- / And we dropped her in fourteen fathom; I pricked it off where she sank. / Owners we were, full owners, and the boat was christened for her, / And she died in the _Mary Gloster_. My heart, how young we were! / So I went on a spree round Java and well-nigh ran her ashore, / But your mother came and warned me and I wouldn't liquor no more: / Strict I stuck to my business, afraid to stop or I'd think, / Saving the money (she warned me), and letting the other men drink. / And I met M'Cullough in London (I'd turned five 'undred then), / And 'tween us we started the Foundry -- three forges and twenty men: / Cheap repairs for the cheap 'uns. It paid, and the business grew, / For I bought me a steam-lathe patent, and that was a gold mine too. / "Cheaper to build 'em than buy 'em," _I_ said, but M'Cullough he shied, / And we wasted a year in talking before we moved to the Clyde.