Jim

We couldn't make him out; he seldom spoke; We never caught him smiling at a joke - And yet he was a decent lad at work: On watch or off, he was the last to shirk - So that, among ourselves, we came to say, 'Jim, he's alright, he's only got his way.' Yet, somehow, in each storm he didn't care. His life or death seemed only God's affair - So when the cry came, in Nor'west Blow, 'Man overboard!' we each one seemed to know ; From the main topsail yardarm he had gone Into the boiling seas . . . the ship held on; There was no saving him in such a gale. Then, when the dawn came, wide, and grey, and pale, We brought his sea-chest aft with all it stored (The custom when a man goes overboard). It held the usual things that sailors own; But at the bottom, in a box, alone, We found a woman's picture - and we knew, Now, why he'd been so offish with the crew - He'd written it as plain as plain could be - 'She went and married HIM instead of me!'