The Screamer

Ai. Once there was the Ardent
That once sailed the warm currents
Of the sea. Thousands did it plunder
With gun and leatherbound whip
And the great dog-pirate like steelclad thunder
Did spear the most with his swordtip.

Then there came one terror-dusk
Of raging sea. Storms did take the lives of men
Scurvy-ridden hounds. They cast the ballast
Into the hungry waters, gave their rum to the questing sea
And the Ardent ardently did pray for the mien
Of the sun mordant to be.

But it was of little avail, you see
For the Ardent did sink'st into the sea.
And men and dogs did give their lives
to She. A thousand chests of plunder
Were the payment for her savage fee.

But no sea-dog was he,
Great Dog-Pirate with the iron knee.
He shook his cutlass free and leapt into stormy sea.
Torrential maw consumed him not
That savage spirit
And found a plank did he, with his iron claw
He hooked the rotting wood to his body
And floated away with the debri.

And survived in the raging seas did he
Great Dog-Pirate
And he snarled portents of defiance
To the capricious fates of storm that came to be
Dogs howled in his commiseration
And agonizingly

His shouts were heard throughout the lands around the sea
His hollers herald the night to be.
And quaking landsmen did cower anxiously
At the echoing calls of the Great Dog-Pirate
He of the steel claw and iron knee.
And in the dusk when the night is clear to see,
Huddle in taverns and whisper mysteriously
Of the deep chants and savage howls of he

He, who they name the "Snarler of the Sargasso",
The Screamer of the Sea.