The Tale On A Bloodied Screed Poem by David Lewis Paget

We were swept up onto this rocky coast
By a storm in '93,
There were thirteen passengers and crew
And a stowaway, that's me!
The ship was holed on the jagged rocks
And it sits still out in the bay,
We've never been able to fix the hole
So it looks like here we'll stay.

It sits forlorn when the tide is low
But is covered when it's high,
As the breakers beat on the after decks
Though the ship is never dry.
The water pours from the cabins, and
Lies deep in the forward hold,
While the rust is eating the hull away
And the cargo's turned to mould.

We thought that we'd soon be rescued
By a ship just passing by,
But all we saw for a month or more
Was the lonely sea and the sky,
We made our camp on the beach where we
Could watch for a passing light,
And cook our fish on the signal fires,
But the trouble came at night.

The crew of seven were restless and
The passengers were few,
For only five of us men were there
And the women, only two.
One, the wife of a clergyman
The other a girl called Gail,
And she was sweet on a man called Deet
That she'd met before we sailed.

But Deet had fought with the bosun
Over the fish he said were his,
They moved away, went around the bay
To seek their Island bliss.
That left the clergyman's wife with us
Who was praying we'd be found,
But late one night, in another fight
The clergyman was drowned.

The bosun dragged her away from us
With Froggat, Jones and Lees,
They took the struggling woman with them
Deep into the trees,
There wasn't a thing we could do for her
So we went out to the ship,
And armed ourselves with iron bars
While we told ourselves: ‘They'll keep! '

We moved our camp from the other crew
For the feeling there was mean,
The three the bosun had left behind
Hid out where they'd not be seen,
But then, at just about midnight we
Were hearing an eerie wail,
For down at the beach they'd murdered Deet
And dragged off the weeping Gail.

From deep in the trees we saw that Lees
Was trying to reach our spot,
His head was covered in blood, but then
He fell from a single shot,
The bosun was dragging Marie, the wife
To the open, by her hair,
Her dress was soiled and her face was spoiled
With the tears of a deep despair.

We didn't see Froggat and Jones again,
They'd fallen to the knife,
But I had to run from the bosun's gun
In order to stay alive,
Then under the cover of darkness we
Went after the weeping Gail,
And beneath the stars with our iron bars
We left a bloodied trail.

We caught the bosun asleep one night
And we beat him with our bars,
He didn't have time to wake before
We dispatched him to the stars,
That left just Jeremy Leach and I
And the women that we'd saved,
For Gordon died of a fever then
And we dug his sandy grave.

It looks as if we'll be here for good
So I'll sign this bloodied screed,
Place it safe in a bottle then
And commit it to the seas,
We won't fight over the women for
Marie is now with Leach,
And Gail has a tiny stowaway
As she wanders along the beach.

30 December 2014