They cried and prayed, and we gave 'em a cheer,
In the thoughtless way of men;
God help them, shipmates—thirty years
They've waited and prayed since then.
"We sailed to the North, and I mind it well.
The pity we felt, and pride
When we sighted the cliffs of Labrador
From the sea where Hudson died.
We talked of ships that never came back,
And when the great floes passed,
Like ghosts in the night, each moonlit peak
Like a great war frigate's mast,
'Twas said that a ship was frozen up
In the iceberg's awful breast.
The clear ice holding the sailor's face
As he lay in his mortal rest.
And I've thought since then, when the ships came home
That sailed for the Franklin band,
A mistake was made in the reckoning
That looked for the crews on land.
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THE LAST OF THE NARWHALE.
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