While The Billy BoilsSearchWith a gash in her bows and her screws a-flailShe poised for the drowning dive,But never a sea-bronzed face turned paleIn that shuddering steel-walled hive.Never a pistol had need to leapDead plumb at a coward’s brain,Never a cutlass needs to sweepWhere white men march the main.“Hurry up, missus! Come along, kid!Steady!” the bosun calls,Till the last rough pair of hands have slidThe strands of the swaying falls.
Not from corrupt Calcutta,Nor starving Seringapatam;Not from the Ganges’ gutterWhere leprous hordes salaam;Men from the English seaport towns,Found in a tap-room fight,But men, by God! who are British at heart —British and brave and white!
The found’ring hull sinks slowly downBeneath the summer skies;They watch her fo’c’sle dip and drown,They watch her rudder rise.The waters wash around her waistAs the lifeboats shoreward steer,But there isn’t s quiver of craven hasteNor a flutter of faint-heart fear.The bowmen pilot with lifted hand,The helmsmen steering aft,Till a gap in the reef that fangs the sandAccepts the crowded craft.
Eight hundred feet spring glad and lightTo the sandy, shallowing beach,While the worth of a million sovereigns brightSlips down from human reachBut never a precious life is lost,Never a drowning cryTo tell of another holocaustWhere hundreds choke and die.So over the world, and round the world,Shall cheers the silence crackWherever a flag is flown and furledOn ships that ban the black.
Not from corrupt Calcutta,Nor starving Seringapatam;Not from the Ganges’ gutterWhere leprous hordes salaam;Men from the English seaport towns,Found in a tap-room fight —Men, by God! who are British at heart;British and brave and white!