Charles Jackson French

THE STRONG SWIMMER
by William Rose Benet*

I have a story fit to tell,
In head and heart a song;
A burning blue Pacific swell;
A raft that was towed along.

Out in the bloody Solomon Isles
Destroyer Gregory gone;
Ocean that kills for all her smiles,
And darkness coming on.

The Gregory’s raft bobbed on the tide
Loaded with wounded men.
Ensign and seaman clung her side.
Seaward she drifted then.

A mess-attendant, a Negro man,
Mighty of chest and limb,
Spoke up: “Til tow you all I can
As long as I can swim.”

Naked, he wound his waist with a line;
Slipped smoothly overside,
Where the red bubble tells the brine
That sharks have sheared the tide.

‘I’m going to tow this old craft in
Since we ain’t got not one oar’
He breathed, as the water lapped his chin;
And he inched that raft ashore.

Strongly he stroked, and long he hauled
No breath for any song.
His wounded mates clung close, appalled.
He towed that raft along.

Clear to the eye the darkening swell
Where glimmering dangers glide;
The raft of sailors grimed from Hell
Afloat on a smoky tide

And a dark shoulder and muscled arm
Lunging, steady and strong.
The messman, their brother, who bears a charm,
Is towing their raft along.

He gasped, “Just say if I’m go’in right!”
Yes, brother, right you are!
Danger of ocean or dark of night,
You steer by one clear star.

Six hours crawled by. … A barge in sight
With the raft just off the shore. . . .
The messman coughed, “Sure, I’m all right’
He was just as he was before.

And all that they knew was they called him “French*
Not quite a name to sing.
Green jungle hell or desert trench,
No man did a braver thing.

He’s burned a story in my brain,
Set in my heart a song.
He and his like, by wave and main,
World without end and not in vain
Are towing this world along!

From “Day of Deliverance,” copyright, 1944, by William Rose Benet.