The Anna Lee was a powerful sail,
Two hundred tons of wood and nail
Iron and rope, tar and freight
On a Northeast gale through Golden Gate,
Through the wide Pacific to the southern sea
We were sailing on the Anna Lee.
The Captain was English, one Rufus J. Law,
Ice for blood and a frozen jaw,
Eyes that knew the worst of men
And no right arm cause of one of them.
And an inward rage that made him thirst
For the smallest reasons to rant and curse.
And curse he did as we got South
In the Antarctic blast from Neptune’s mouth.
The shriek in the rigging was the Devil’s laugh
Cause he knew the pain of our chosen path.
When Small John fell in Magellan’s Strait
Who would have thought envy for his fate.
His fading pleas from the icy sea,
No help from the Anna Lee.
Bound NNE we left the Horn
With quiet thanks ‘neath the Captain’s scorn.
As latitude fell, the sky came fair
And the light and warmth eased our care.
We crossed the line with rum and a laugh
Thinking fear and danger were in our past.
And we waited for the easterlies
To blow us home on the Anna Lee.
The wind came east but our course was set
And the rumors churned and the bets were bet,
And Captain Law was stern and tight
With his NE course day and night.
And Billy Pease the cabin boy
Collected his winnings, but with no joy.
For he chose the port we feared most
Abidjan in the Ivory Coast
There was only one reason for putting in,
The profit found in selling men
Souls for sale on the open sea
The doom of the Anna Lee.
There was no wind in the midday sun,
So the long boats pulled the final run
And a single plank to a broken pier.
Searing heat, aching fear
The sun set west and we thought of home
Till through the dark we heard the moans
And, with the clank of chain, eighty men
Walked aboard and disappeared again,
Shackled fast in sweating holds
Labor for the sugar cane, life for gold.
With a falling tide and freshening wind
We were soon to open sea again,
And my rage at the captain must have showed,
It was I he ordered down below
To do a duty that must be
The harshest ever on any sea.
Buckets of water and rotten bread
And inventories of sick and dead
Down below, day by day,
Watching lives slip away.
Vacant stares of hopeless men
Doomed never to be free again.
But there was one whom when I walked
Followed me with eyes of a hawk
And through fetid air and light so dim
I thought I saw the slightest grin.
Hawkeyes grinned and I could see
A man who planned to again be free,
A man who saw that he could be
Master of the Anna Lee.
For three fortnights we were westward bound
And we dreamed of life with different sounds.
Wagon wheels on cobbled lanes
And promises not to sail again;
Laughing children begging sweets,
Bustling shops, busy streets.
Those we loved close at hand
Softening the cruelty of our fellow man,
Daydreams to stop the reality
Of life on the Anna Lee
One morning the sky through tired sails
Assumed a greenish yellow pale
And the ocean started a mighty heave
God’s fury yet to be relieved.
Oily sea and sickly warm
A prelude to the worst of storms.
Rising wind and pounding rain,
The late September hurricane.
And the wind it tore and howled and shrieked
And the strong and mighty were scared and meek.
All day we fought to save the ship
In the fading light we lost our grip.
A rogue wave caught us from the back
And broke us with a mighty crack.
We manned the pumps but there weren’t the hands
To push the sea back again.
Then Captain Law gave me the key,
“
Get below, set them free.”
The opened lock released the pins
And the shackles fell off weakened men
And to the decks came those who could
And on the pumps went those who would.
But one held back cause he could see
That chaos brought opportunity.
Hawkeyes hid so he could be
In the final act of the Anna Lee.
The Captain was lashed to the starboard rail
And shouted orders above the gale,
And the lightning flashed and the storm was fought
The fight, however, all for naught.
The sea began to swallow us whole
And the Captain cursed our wretched souls.
Just before we slipped from sight
Hawkeyes jumped forth with a marlin spike,
And his eyes gleamed with sweet revenge
For the stolen life that might have been,
And all the hopes that would never be
As a slave on the Anna Lee.
A lightning flash caught and froze
The final instant of the death throes.
The grand ship slipping to her rest
And the steely spike through the Captain’s chest,
And the darkness boiled and we all went in
And the sea swallowed up a thousand sins.
And I swam and prayed till my hand latched
On a floating piece of the forward hatch.
I will never know how I survived
But the clear dawn found me half alive.
Then light off steel did my eye strike
Next to me the marlin spike
In the black fist of a half-drowned man,
Hawkeyes and I alone did stand.
The final fury of the sea
The sole survivors of the Anna Lee.
I gave a moan and turned around,
Hawkeyes came to at the sound
And he yanked the spike from the wood
And I watched him wonder if he should
Run me through as partial pay
For all he’d lost along his way.
Too weak to fight and no common tongue
I dropped my hands, his will be done.
Two beaten souls in the morning sky,
He heard my thoughts through my half closed eyes:
“
If revenge is the sweet you like,
Then feed your hunger and use the spike.
But if your wish is to be free,
Then side by side you stand with me.
Together we live, apart we die,
We cannot change life gone by.
We must survive to fight again
For with our death injustice wins.
Fate allowed us both to live
And God allows us to forgive.”
Hawkeyes then grabbed a plank,
Tore it loose and though lean and lank,
He started rowing through the sea
And a glance suggested the same for me.
So I made an oar for the starboard shift
And after two long days and a lucky drift,
We spied land soft and green
And we got to shore and found a spring
And we drank our fill and on fruit we fed,
Life returned to the nearly dead.
And as we parted company,
He passed the marlin spike to me
And I passed it back and it did leave
His hand forever with a mighty heave.
It tumbled and twisted to always be
A relic lost in an empty sea.
A stranger in an unknown land
He walked away with a half-raised hand
And I made my way to Kingston Town
And found a frigate Northward Bound.
And by the sea I lived my life,
Five fat babies and a jolly wife,
And that’s the tale from beneath the sea
The entire truth of the Anna Lee.