Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
of good oakum, and bolts o’ canvas, and all the sound rope in Come alongside, or we’ll hang ye,” he says.
the yard. What else could I ha’ done? I knowed what he’d ‘’Twas none of my affairs who he was if he wasn’t Frankie,
need most after a week’s such work. I’m a shipbuilder, little and while he talked so hot I slipped behind a green-painted
maid.
ship with her top-sides splintered. We was all in the middest
‘We’d a fair slant o’ wind off Dungeness, and we crept on of ‘em then.
till it fell light airs and puffed out. The Spanishers was all in a ‘“Hi! Hoi!” the green ship says. “Come alongside, honest
huddle over by Calais, and our ships was strawed about mend- man, and I’ll buy your load. I’m Fenner that fought the seven
ing ‘emselves like dogs lickin’ bites. Now and then a Spanisher Portugals—clean out of shot or bullets. Frankie knows me.”
would fire from a low port, and the ball ‘ud troll across the ‘“Ay, but I don’t,” I says, and I slacked nothing.
flat swells, but both sides was finished fightin’ for that tide. ‘He was a masterpiece. Seein’ I was for goin’ on, he hails a
‘The first ship we foreslowed on, her breastworks was Bridport hoy beyond us and shouts, “George! Oh, George!
crushed in, an’ men was shorin’ ‘em up. She said nothing. Wing that duck. He’s fat!” An’ true as we’re all here, that squatty
The next was a black pinnace, his pumps clackin’ middling Bridport boat rounds to acrost our bows, intendin’ to stop us
quick, and he said nothing. But the third, mending shot-holes, by means o’ shooting.
he spoke out plenty. I asked him where Mus’ Drake might ‘my Aunt looks over our rail. “George,” she says, “you fin-
be, and a shiny-suited man on the poop looked down into ish with your enemies afore you begin on your friends.”
us, and saw what we carried.
‘Him that was laying the liddle swivel-gun at us sweeps off
‘“Lay alongside you!” he says. “We’ll take that all.” his hat an’ calls her Queen Bess, and asks if she was selling
‘“’Tis for Mus’ Drake,” I says, keeping away lest his size liquor to pore dry sailors. My Aunt answered him quite a
should lee the wind out of my sails.
piece. She was a notable woman.
‘“Hi! Ho! Hither! We’re Lord High Admiral of England! ‘Then he come up—his long pennant trailing overside—
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