XCV. NO! NOT FOR GOLD!
I
[_]
[The tale told in these stanzas is literally true. It is recorded in the
“Shipwreck of the Juno” by William Mackay in 1798. Byron
borrowed from it the incidents in the shipwreck in “Don Juan.”
Thomas Moore preferred the simple and unaffected prose narrative
of the sailor to Byron's poetry.]
Fifty souls on board! aloft in the rigging and spars,
In the water-logged vessel, idly afloat in the bay,
With only one barrel of biscuits and two little water-jars
To feed them, alas! for many a weary day!
Water enough for an hour, if none should come from the clouds,
Which, mocking their sorrow, had long refused to rain,
And they clung to the creaking masts and the cramping shrouds,
Alive, though dying slowly in the grip of the hunger pain.
II
They doled out the biscuit fairly, patient and true and brave,
To each man and woman a portion, and the little cabin boy,
And when the merciless noon burned fiercely down on the wave,
They doled out the dwindling water, each drop a blessing and joy:
And the poor little lad drank, smiling, his small allotted share,
But, far too feeble to eat, hid the biscuit away in his vest,
While the ravenous crew, with their wolfish eyes aglare,
Could have eaten him up with his biscuit and thought it for the best.
III
The captain's wife in the rigging, a buxom woman and strong,
Had fifteen hundred guineas sewed up in the belt she wore;
“Poor little Willie!” she said, “your biscuit will last you long,
Give me one half of a biscuit for half my golden store!
Nay, all my golden guineas.”—“Ah no!” said the sorrowful child,
“I want to live a little, though life is very forlorn;
I cannot eat your guineas, my head seems running wild,
But I think I'll eat my biscuit, to-night or to-morrow morn!”
