Ballads of a Bohemian | Page 7

My Garret, Montparnasse,
April.
Hurrah! As I opened my eyes this morning to a hard, unfeeling world, little did I think what a surprise awaited me. A big blue envelope had been pushed under my door. Another rejection, I thought, and I took it up distastefully. The next moment I was staring at my first cheque.
It was an express order for two hundred francs, in payment of a bit of verse. . . . So to-day I will celebrate. I will lunch at the D'Harcourt, I will dine on the Grand Boulevard, I will go to the theater.
Well, here's the thing that has turned the tide for me.?It is somewhat in the vein of "Sourdough" Service, the Yukon bard. I don't think much of his stuff, but they say he makes heaps of money. I can well believe it, for he drives a Hispano-Suiza in the Bois every afternoon. The other night he was with a crowd at the Dome Cafe, a chubby chap who sits in a corner and seldom speaks. I was disappointed. I thought he was a big, hairy man who swore like a trooper and mixed brandy with his beer. He only drank Vichy, poor fellow!
Lucille
Of course you've heard of the ~Nancy Lee~, and how she sailed away On her famous quest of the Arctic flea, to the wilds of Hudson's Bay? For it was a foreign Prince's whim to collect this tiny cuss, And a golden quid was no more to him than a copper to coves like us. So we sailed away and our hearts were gay as we gazed on the gorgeous scene; And we laughed with glee as we caught the flea of the wolf and the wolverine; Yea, our hearts were light as the parasite of the ermine rat we slew, And the great musk ox, and the silver fox, and the moose and the caribou. And we laughed with zest as the insect pest of the marmot crowned our zeal, And the wary mink and the wily "link", and the walrus and the seal. And with eyes aglow on the scornful snow we danced a rigadoon, Round the lonesome lair of the Arctic hare, by the light of the silver moon.
But the time was nigh to homeward hie, when, imagine our despair! For the best of the lot we hadn't got -- the flea of the polar bear. Oh, his face was long and his breath was strong, as the Skipper he says to me: "I wants you to linger 'ere, my lad, by the shores of the Hartic Sea; I wants you to 'unt the polar bear the perishin' winter through, And if flea ye find of its breed and kind, there's a 'undred quid for you." But I shook my head: "No, Cap," I said; "it's yourself I'd like to please, But I tells ye flat I wouldn't do that if ye went on yer bended knees." Then the Captain spat in the seething brine, and he says: "Good luck to you, If it can't be did for a 'undred quid, supposin' we call it two?" So that was why they said good-by, and they sailed and left me there -- Alone, alone in the Arctic Zone to hunt for the polar bear.
Oh, the days were slow and packed with woe,?till I thought they would never end;?And I used to sit when the fire was lit, with my pipe for my only friend. And I tried to sing some rollicky thing, but my song broke off in a prayer, And I'd drowse and dream by the driftwood gleam; I'd dream of a polar bear; I'd dream of a cloudlike polar bear that blotted the stars on high, With ravenous jaws and flenzing claws, and the flames of hell in his eye. And I'd trap around on the frozen ground, as a proper hunter ought, And beasts I'd find of every kind, but never the one I sought. Never a track in the white ice-pack that humped and heaved and flawed, Till I came to think: "Why, strike me pink! if the creature ain't a fraud." And then one night in the waning light, as I hurried home to sup, I hears a roar by the cabin door, and a great white hulk heaves up. So my rifle flashed, and a bullet crashed; dead, dead as a stone fell he, And I gave a cheer, for there