This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye,
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As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the Glories swept the sky;
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As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of "hooch" was dry.
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A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong;
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I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft of his hate was strong.
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He thonged me East and he thonged me West; he harried me back and forth,
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Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite to the bleak, bald-headed North.
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And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan,
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For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man;
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And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams;
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And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams.
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So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such,
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Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch;
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About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will,
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In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man I sought to kill.
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'Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed to the Prince of Gloom
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For the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom.
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Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago;
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My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so.
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It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon's oily flow,
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I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky's port-winey glow;
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Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the river seemed to shrink,
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All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink.
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'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a queer, hypnotic dream,
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Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream;
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It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring;
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It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing.
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In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering round its head,
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Like butterflies of a monster size--then I knew it for the Dead.
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Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate;
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In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner-plate.
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It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew;
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It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through.
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It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat,
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With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet.
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And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that "floater" say:
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"I am the man from whom you ran, the man you sought to slay.
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That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say `Revenge is sweet',
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In the grit and grime of the river's slime I am rotting at your feet.
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"The ill we rue we must e'en undo, though it rive us bone from bone;
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So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed I might atone.
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I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought where you might live;
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And now you're found, though I'm dead and drowned, I beg you to forgive."
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So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed, and its fingers flicked the shore;
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And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore;
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That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe;
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Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, I forgave you long ago."
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Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke from a horrid dream.
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The moon rode high in the naked sky, and something bobbed in the stream.
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It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it sheered from the shore;
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It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never saw it more.
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This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped and gray,
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Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed in his eye in a wolfish way--
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That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird Auroral ray.
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The Ballad of One-Eyed Mike
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| Hank Snow |
