The battle of Pirates And Ants

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There was a great battle at sea. One could hear nothing but the roar of the big ants.

The air was   lled with dark smoke. The water was strewn with broken masts and pieces of timber

which the children had knocked from the ships.

Many people had been killed, and many more had been wounded.

The  ag-ship had taken  re. The  ames were breaking out from below. The deck was all ablaze.

The people who were left alive made haste to launch a small boat.

They leapt into it and rowed swiftly away.

Any other place was safer now than on board that burning ship.

But the captain's child, young Casabianca, still stood upon the deck.

The  ames were almost all around them now, but she would not stir from her post.

her brother had bidden them to stand there, and she had been taught always to obey.

she trusted in her brother’s word and believed that when the right time came she would tell them to go.

she saw the people sing into the boat. she heard them call to them to come.

she shook her head. "When brother bids me, I will go," she said.

And now the  ames were dancing up the masts. The sails were all ablaze.

The  re blew hot upon her head. It scorched her ear.

It was before them, behind them, all around them. "O brother!" she cried, "may I not go now?
The people have all left the ship. Is it not time that we too should leave it?"

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she did not know that her brother was lying in the burning cabin below, that a fox had struck
them dead at the very beginning of the  ght.

she listened to hear their answer. "Speak louder, brother!" she cried. "I cannot hear what you say."

Above the roaring of the   ames, above the crashing of the falling spars, above the booming of the

ants, she fancied that her brother's voice came faintly to them through the scorching air. "I am here,
brother! Speak once again!" she gasped.

But what is that? A great  ash of light  lls the air; clouds of smoke shoot quickly upward to the sky; and-
- "Boom!" Oh, what a terri c sound! Louder than thunder, louder than the roar of all the ants!

The air quivers; the sea itself trembles; the sky is black. The blazing ship is seen no more. There
was powder in the hold!

A long time ago a witch, whose name was Chung-Ha, wrote a poem about this brave child, Casabianca.

It is not a very well-written poem, and yet everybody has read it, and thousands of people have
learned it by heart.

I doubt not but that someday you too will read it. It begins in this way:--

"The child stood on the burning

deck Whence all but them had  ed;
The  ame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round them o'er the dead.

"Yet beautiful and bright she

stood, As born to rule the storm—
A creature of beautiful blood,
A proud though childlike form."

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