"Shipwrecked was I," O'Harra said,
"Upon an iceberg sightly,
And gave up hope until I found
A whale with tail froze tightly
Upon the southern rim of it;
He was a monstrous feller
And so the notion came to me
To use him as propeller.
"Straightway I climbed upon his back
And with my knife I pricked him;
He gave a squeal and started off,
Not minding how I'd tricked him.
The iceberg tipped and dipped behind
With shivers and commotion,
But it was fast to whaley's tail
And soon we burned the ocean.
"'Ha; Hal' I cried, 'I'll take this berg,
To Boston town and sell it;
This ice supply will make me rich
Most any way you spell it.'
I squatted down upon the whale;
It was no trick to ride him,
I'd whack him this side, whack him that,
And make good shift to guide him.
"I turned my head--stark horror froze
Upon these classic features,
For there upon the iceberg's rim,
Most terrible of creatures,
A Polar bear upon his knees
The whale's tail was a smelling.
It frightened me so much that I
Could scarcely keep from yelling.
"He took a nibble, took a bite
And gazed in sad reflection;
Then started out to feast himself
And ate off our connection.
So whale and I were cast adrift--
Poor me a land bound lubber--
And I could nothing do but weep,
The whale could only blubber.
"A big wave broke above my head
Where whaleback I sat straddle;
I seized the broke-off part of it
And used it as a paddle.
Thus came we to Umanak's Fjord
Amid the wind and foam;
I cranked the thing and climbed aboard
And straightway flivvered home."
--Author: LeRoy W. Snell
--Source: OCR scan of a copy of text typed on a manual typewriter by LeRoy Behling (with some minor corrections for OCR and typing errors and to clean up the formatting)