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The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, June 1916

"The Old Pontoon."*

"The Old Pontoon."*

Phasellus ille quem videtis, hospites,

Ait fuisse navium celerrimus . . . .

That old pontoon, Sirs, which you see,
Claims to have come from Germany.
At Kiel, in whose close-guarded bay
The Dreadnoughts of the Hunland lay
With their attendant Zeppelins
And hydroplanes and submarines,
"Twas show' it says, by its deviser,
Von Tirpitz, to his Lord the Kasier,
Who, all in shining armour clad
Like Parsifal or Galahad,
Waved his good sword and sang elate
The grand Pan-German Hymn of Hate.
Then, Loaded well with shot and shell
And every kind of poison-smell,
It was dispatched, one happy morn,
(It tells us) to the Golden Horn
page 28 To held the Sultan drive those hounds,
The British, out of Egypt's bounds.
Pleased with the gift, the sultan wired:
"Gott strafe England! More required!"
And sent it forward, bombs and all,
To Aleppo, o'er the mountain-wall
To which good Kaiser Barbaross'
Once led the armies of the Cross,
Not guessing how Kultur would scorn
That symbol of a faith outworn.
Thence by the new strategic line
It sped, and passing Palestine,
Which Hadji Wilhelm means to claim
From Abdul in the Prophet's name
For standing by him while he slew
The Armenians, and ungrateful crew
Who, granted life, want justice too,
It crossed the desert—where, they say,
Cambyses crossed it in his day—
To the Canal. "There, lieber Gott!
Something went wrong, I know not what:
My brave companions bit the dust
In hundreds; but their souls (I trust,
Are now carousing in Valhalla
With Odin and his good friend Allah."

So ends its tale. And here 'twill lie
While many a peaceful year goes by
A Battered hulk, to mark the fall
Of crackbrained hatred, and recall
The Victory which our Anzacs won
O'er brother Turk and brother Hun.

—"F."

* Captured from the Turks at the Suez Canal.