PERFIDE ALBION

By Aliph Cheem

Did you e’er meet a Gaul, patriotic in ton,

Who didn’t call England perfide Albion ?

If you haven’t as yet, you are certain to hear him

Whenever you mention the taking of Perim.

This Perim’s an island

Devoid of a tree,

A baked bit of dry land

Below the Red Sea.

No Government owned it

A few years ago,

Till Great Britain boned it,

As soon I shall show.

It’s dreadfully rocky, and frightfully hot;

And out of it not e’en a weed’s to be got;

In fact, upon islands at large it’s a blot;

And I’d rather be shot

Than be told that my lot

Was to dwell on that desolate, desolate spot.

But it stands in a strait at the Red Sea's mouth,

Commanding the passage or north or south;

And should matters in Eastern parts ever be critical,

Perim might prove of some value political.

At all events, this was the statesmanlike view

That was taken by each diplomatic Mossoo.

“ Ne possèdent-ils pas Aden, ces Anglais, mon Dieu !

Oui; nous aurons Perim. Pourquoi non? Sacré bleu ! “

This was what the bureaux designate une idée,

And the next thing to do was to make it un fait.

That’s the usual course in affairs Continental,

So why not adopt it in things Oriental?

“ Ces Anglais”" might swear,

Crying out t’was unfair,

And a robbery bare;

And The Times and The Leader might offer a prayer

For a country so greedy and mad as to dare

To maraud in the East, for the world was aware

That the East was old England’s peculiar care;

And The Times, as The Times, would have Frenchmen beware,

For that Perim might prove, after all, but a snare,

Entailing an outlay they couldn’t well spare,

And France had already far more than her share-

Bourbon, Pondicherry, and Chandarnagore-

And ’twas monstrous to think she could want any more;

That other encumbrance might drain, couldn’t better her,

And the sooner she dropped it-, etcetera, etcetera.

Thus argued Mossoo

That old England would do;

But he added a pregnant corollary too ;

“ Let her talk if she likes,

She looks fierce, never strikes,

For John Bull is the servant of Mr. Bill Sykes.

She may swagger, and bluster, and warn us, but we

Will inform her the thing is un fait accompli;

And you’ll probably see

That, although very hurt,

She will let matters be,

And will swallow the dirt.”

The project thus having been carefully hatched,

“ Un ordre” was to Bourbon or somewhere despatched,

Telling Mossoo le Chef to send off a fast frigate

To Perim, and, e’er that the British could twig it,

To hoist the French drapeau upon it, and prig it.

So a frigate was sent,

With this wicked intent.

And with gaudy new drapeaux was heavily laden;

And the ship on her way

Just put in for a day

At the British adjacent possession of Aden.

Now, of course, what the rôle

She should play, or the goal

She’d in view, not a soul

On this freebooting ship

Gave the slenderest tip;

She might have been trying to find the South Pole.

The sailors were fêted

And some got elated,

And Frenchmen and Englishmen amalgamated;

But never a word

Of their mission was heard;

And this silence you’ll think neither strange nor absurd,

When I tell you they none of them knew. It was wrapped in

The innermost cell of the breast of the captain.

The name of this, captain was François de Bonheur,

Of, I hardly need say so, the légion d’ honneur ;

And our Governor’s name was Sir John Thomas, he

Being, ça va sans dire,-a distinguished C.B.

The latter invited the captain to dine,

And placed on his board some uncommon good wine.

Now, whether ‘twas due to the port or the sherry,

Or high-seasoned fare,

Or British “ portare”

Or the tropical air,

I cannot declare;

But somehow or other they grew pretty merry.

Sir John Thomas, rising, rejoiced beyond measure,

In fact it was hard to express all his pleasure,

To see at his table,

So gallant a naval,

So brave and devoted,

So noble and noted

A sailor of France as a guest on his right.

And he felt, with a kind of prophetic foresight,

That the object - he hoped they’d excuse the remark-

The object they kept so remarkably dark

Be it fishing for turtles or finding new seas,

Or searching the East for prescribed refugees,

Or trying a gun on some beggarly village,

Or practising hands at a wee bit of pillage,

Would, unless some unfortunate accident dished it,

Be crowned with the thorough success that he wished it.

Then the gallant Mossoo

With his hand on his star,

Said,- “ I thank you, parbleu !

Varee moosh de ma part;

C’ est défendu de dire

Ce que nous allons faire,

J’ai juré par l’Empire

Ma patrie et ma mere,

Mais” . . . perhaps ’twas the port had relaxed his discretion,

Perhaps he conceived

We’d be better deceived

By a make show of candour, a touch of confession;

Perhaps he felt sure ’twas too late in the day

To matter, if now he disclosed le secret;

However it came about, this much is certain,

He raised for a moment a bit of the curtain.

For he went on to say

In a nonchalant way,

That although ’twasn’t proper to flash his objet,

He was bound, in his quest of it, up the Red Sea,

To some place which was only conjectured to be ;

That he hadn’t in view any war or alliance,

That his mission was purely connected with science;

And that simply to fill up a page in his log,

And look at a shore which to him was incog.

He intended to order his master to steer him

En passant, quite close to the island of Perim.

Then he grew sentimental, and red in the face,

And smothered an aide de camp in an embrace,

And swore he thought Aden a glorious place,

And kissed Sir John Thomas (who made a grimace),

And called that brave soldier a vare joli tar

And wound it all up with a “heep heep hourrah!”

At the mention of Perim Sir John nearly rose

From his chair, but recovered by blowing his nose.

He blew it a good twenty minutes at least,

And appeared to have done himself good when he ceased.

But there seemed something like to a wink in his eye,

As he whispered some words to an Aide sitting by;

Which Aide, when he heard, looked half funny, half grave

As a man meditating a pun or a shave;

Stole a glance at the captain, and one at Sir John,

Then seemed most intently the ceiling to con;

Then stared in his wineglass right down to the bottom,

As though there were flies in his wine, he’d got ’em;

Then fidgetted, jerkily looking behind,

As if to skedaddle occurred to his mind;

Then, finally, vanished in haste from his chair,

As if he’d the toothache, or needed fresh air.

When he got well outside,

Where the darkness would hide,

He walked down the hill out of sound of the revel.

There his cap up he shied,

And he laughed till he cried,

Then he took to his legs and he ran like the Devil,

Ran till he stood, void of breath, on the poop,

Of a nice little, tight little, British war-sloop;

And the message he gave, amid roars, to the skipper,

Was, just as that worthy expressed it, a clipper.

The night was still young when the snug little ship

Left Aden, as on some mysterious trip;

And the Aide saw the rock sinking down to a speck

As he danced an expressive pas seul on the deck.

The feed came, of course, like all feeds, to a close.

Potations concluded, and the Frenchmen all rose.

There were farewells ecstatic, embracings convulsive,

And kisses-eugh! slobberings, that is the word:

Sir John thought the capitaine highly repulsive,

The capitaine thought Sir John highly absurd;

But they hugged and they shrugged,

And they parted in sorrow,

And spoke very huskily both of the morrow,

As if it would dawn on twin hearts rudely cleft,

And it wasn't all humbug and over the left.

Well, the morrow did dawn, and the jaunty French ship

At the first streak of light gave her moorings the slip.

De Bonheur arose too, betimes, from his bed,

With a dolorous sense of possessing a head.

But he said to himself as he fixed his two eyes on

The island of Perim, just on the horizon

“Sir John Thomas, when he shall hear of my prize,

Will possess a head too, and will flatter my eyes.”

Then his sabre he buckled,

And swaggered and chuckled,

And got the new drapeau all out of the hold,

And ordered the gunners

To fire off some stunners,

That the glory of France might be properly told.

Soon the desolate shore

Topped the waves more and more,

Till the land, red and bare

In the pitiless glare,

Became clear to the view

Of the gallant Mossoo.

He balanced himself with his glass and looked out,

And, after a pause, put it down as in doubt;

Looked again: took his mouchoir and polished the lens:

Looked again: pitched it down, and took one of his men’s;

Looked again: blew his nose, rubbed his eyes, and once more

Laid it down; put his hands in his pockets and swore.

He sacré-bleu'd awful a minute or so,

And tapped at his brow as he paced to and fro

As if he half dreaded his brains had got loose

Or some fiend with his vision was playing the deuce.

At length somewhat calm he returned to the charge,

This time with a telescope wonderfully large.

He looked: let it fall; stared to landward a bit

With protruding blank eyes, and- fell down in a fit.

And now, gentle reader, it’s time that you knew

What horrors had burst on Le Capitaine’s view.

On a ridge of the island which highest appeared,

A pretty tall flag-staff was solidly reared,

So tall ’twould have certainly shamed all the trees,

Had there been any there; and afloat on the breeze

Streamed the swelling expanse of the glorious old flag

Which English affection and slang calls “the Rag” ;

While beneath, hat in hand, were a group of Jack Tars,

Engaged evidently in shouting hurrahs;

And astride on a rock, ’neath an umbrella’s shade,

Like the sprite of the sea, our acquaintance, the Aide.

Thus Perim was won,

And thus Frenchmen were done,

And if a bit shabby,

’Twas very good fun.