SOUTHWARD BOUND.
The Nimrod sailed for the Southern Seas,
- On her voyage of venture bent;
She left the Heads with a westerly breeze
- As the Flagship’s cheers grew faint.
She was taken in tow by the “Koonya”,
- With seven score fathoms of wire,
And for twelve long days and nights she strove
- With a southerly buster’s ire.
Watch by watch for two hours at a stretch
- To the pony stalls we clung,
With the water knee-deep on the for’ard hatch,
- And the decks a’swimming with dung.
“Doctor” was down on the third night out,
- And eight hours later was dead;
For the efforts of man in a gale were ‘nowt,’
- So his end was an ounce of lead.
We slept in our sodden bunks by night,
- Abaft the after hold;
And wished for the day to bring in the light
- And the tale that was yet to be told.
On the fifteenth day we sighted the ice;
- So the “Koonya” cast us free;
With ten of Boyle’s sheep aboard in a trice,
- And another ten lost in the sea.
With all sail set and a following breeze
- Toward that distant land we sped;
And crept through a field of a thousand bergs
- Which guarded a virgin bed.
To the Great Ice Barrier’s edge we come
- And search on that lonely shore,
For the spot we should make our winter home,
- Which was known to be there of yore.
Not a sign was there of the Bight we sought,
- But ten miles south sailed we
Of a place that was marked by a skipper named Scott,
- In a ship called “Discovery”.
So east we turned to the land of our King,
- For there we would plant our flag;
But the‘heavy ice pack on our starboard tack '
- Prevented us landing our swag.
Then westward toward the setting sun
- Along the Barrier’s edge.
As a last resource, to land our force
- On a place from which we could sledge.
In a solitary hut on a lonely isle
- Beneath a smoke capped height,
Hemmed in by the ice that grips us awhile
- We wait in the long dark night.
When the sun returns from his tropical home,
- And smiles on these desolate quarters,
May the ice hold fast till sledging is past,
- Then ‘What Ho'! for our wives and daughters.