And 'Take me home to my happy island!' he says. 'Not I,' sings Hook, by thunder;

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We'll take you home to a happier isle, our palmy harbour of Caribbee!'

'You won't?' says Bacchus, and quick as a dream the planks of the deck just heaved asunder,

And a mighty Vine came straggling up that grew from the depths of the wine-dark sea.

And the sea went round, and the skies went round,

As our cross-tree song we sung:

Half a hundred horrified pirates

When the world was young!

We were anchored fast as an oak on land, and the branches clutched and the tendrils quickened,

And bound us writhing like snakes to the spars! Ay, we hacked with our knives at the boughs in vain,

And Bacchus laughed loud on the decks below, as ever the tough sprays tightened and thickened,

And the blazing hours went by, and we gaped with thirst and our ribs were racked with pain.

And the skies went round, and the sea swam round,

And we knew not what we sung:

Half a hundred lunatic pirates

When the world was young!

Bunch upon bunch of sunlike grapes, as we writhed and struggled and raved and strangled,

Bunch upon bunch of gold and purple daubed its bloom on our baked black lips.

Clustering grapes, O, bigger than pumpkins, just out of reach they bobbed and dangled

Over the vine-entangled sails of that most dumbfounded of pirate ships!

And the sun went round, and the moon came round,

And mocked us where we hung:

Half a hundred maniac pirates

When the world was young!

Over the waters the white moon winked its bruised old eye at our bowery prison,

When suddenly we were aware of a light such as never a moon or a ship's lamp throws,

And a shallop of pearl, like a Nautilus shell, came shimmering up as by magic arisen,

With sails of silk and a glory around it that turned the sea to a rippling rose.

And our heads went round, and the stars went round,

At the song that cruiser sung:

Half a hundred goggle-eyed pirates
When the world was young!

Half a hundred rose-white Bacchanals hauled the ropes of that rosy cruiser !

Over the seas they came and laid their little white hands on the old black barque;

And Bacchus he ups and he steps aboard: Hi, stop!' cries Hook, "You frantic old boozer !

Belay, below there, don't you go and leave poor pirates to die in the dark!'

And the moon went round, and the stars went round,

As they all pushed off and sung:

Half a hundred ribbonless Bacchanals
When the world was young!

Over the seas they went and Bacchus he stands, with his yelloweyed leopards beside him,

High on the poop of rose and pearl, and kisses his hand to us, pleasant as pie!

While the Bacchanals danced to their tambourines, and the vineleaves flew, and Hook just eyed him

Once, as a man that was brought up pious, and scornfully hollers, 'Well, you ain't shy!'

For all around him, vine-leaf crowned,

The wild white Bacchanals flung!
Nor it wasn't a sight for respectable pirates
When the world was young!

All around that rainbow-Nautilus rippled the bloom of a thousand

roses,

Nay, but the sparkle of fairy sea-nymphs breasting a fairy-like sea of wine,

Swimming around it in murmuring thousands, with white arms tossing; till-all that we knows is

The light went out, and the night was dark, and the grapes had burst and their juice was-brine !

And the vines that bound our bodies round

Were plain wet ropes that clung:
Squeezing the light out o' fifty pirates

When the world was young!

Over the seas in the pomp of dawn a king's ship came with her proud flag flying;

Cloud upon cloud we watched her tower with her belts and her crowded zones of sail;

And an A.B. perched in a white crow's nest, with a brass-rimmed spy-glass quietly spying,

As we swallowed the lumps in our choking throats and uttered our last faint feeble hail!

And our heads went round as the ship went round,

And we thought how coves had swung:

All for playing at broad-sheet pirates

When the world was young!

Half a hundred trembling corsairs, all cut loose, but a trifle giddy, We lands on their trim white decks at last and the bo'sun he

whistles us good hot grog,

And we tries to confess, but there wasn't a soul from the Admiral's self to the gold-laced middy

But says, 'They're delirious still, poor chaps,' and the Cap'n he enters the fact in his log.

That his boat's crew found us nearly drowned

In a barrel without a bung

Half a hundred suffering sea-cooks

When the world was young!

So we sailed by Execution Dock, where the swinging pirates haughty and scornful

Rattled their chains, and on Margate beach we came like a schooltreat safe to land;

And one of us took to religion at once; and the rest of the crew, tho' their hearts were mournful,

Capered about as Christy Minstrels, while Hook conducted the big brass band.

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And the sun went round, and the moon went round,

And, O, 'twas a thought that stung!

There was none to believe we were broad-sheet pirates
When the world was young!

Ah, yet (if ye stand me a noggin of rum) shall the old Blue Dolphin echo the story!

We'll hoist the white cross-bones again in our palmy harbour of Caribbee!

We'll wave farewell to our negro lasses and, chorussing out to the billows of glory,

Billows a-glitter with rum and gold, we'll follow the sunset over the sea!

While earth goes round, let rum go round!

O, sing it as we sung!

Half a hundred terrible pirates

When the world was young!

ALFRED NOYES.

MANCHURIA-IN THE MOURNE MOUNTAINS

Of all the various qualities required by the soldier few occupy such a peculiar position as the faculty of an accurate imagination. In peace training it is not only useful but absolutely essential (provided it be kept within the limits of scientific strategy and correct tactics) for the development of situations and of circumstances invoking on the part of those engaged a corresponding capacity to imagine, but if it strays into the region of the theoretically improbable it is apt to become dangerous in its instructional results.

And here the theories of peace and the records of war are at variance; for in war the improbable is so prone to happen that he whose imaginative powers fail to rise within the limits of foresight to the possibility of the occurrence of improbabilities, is apt to be misled into disappointing and perhaps disastrous situations.

Take for instance Napoleon in two 'coups manqués '—the one when pushing across the Douro in his great winter march from Madrid in December 1808 he failed to intercept Sir John Moore, because, allowing his imagination too free a rein, he assumed that all information pointed to that general being considerably further South and East of the Carrion country than he in reality was; the other when, having pierced the Anglo-Allied and Prussian protective line along the Sambre and Meuse in 1815 and won the day at Ligny, he concluded that, placed as he was between the two armies, the certain result would be retreat by his foes along the divergent Antwerp and Maestricht Cologne lines of communication, and failed to imagine it possible that Blücher, disregarding all theories and maxims of war, would daringly cut himself adrift from his communications, and by manoeuvring for position for a flank march westward, be prepared to deliver that counter-stroke the promise of which alone decided Wellington to accept battle in the defensive Waterloo position. To that counter-stroke the Duke himself has recorded the memorable victory of that bloodstained summer Sunday was principally due.

How then is the instructor and framer of ideas in time of peace to strike the balance? How is he at once to restrain riotous and