You've heard the tales of Tarzan,
Chinese Charlie Chan,
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street
And ‘cow pie’ Desperate Dan;
Well, now I'm going to tell you
Of another kind of man.
Yes, now I'm going to tell you,
As the light grows dim,
And we sit here in the jungle
At the wide world's rim,
Of the man who matched them all:
And his name was Captain Jim.
Where he came from is a mystery,
Where he went to no one knows,
But his talents were amazing
(From his eyebrows to his toes!),
And his brain was full of brainwaves,
And his reputation grows.
It all began one summer
Near this very spot,
When the river-boats were steaming
And the river banks were hot,
And the crocodiles were teeming,
Which sometimes a child forgot.
I was playing with my brothers,
Bertie, Joe and little Frank,
In the mangrove trees that twisted
From that mossed and muddy bank;
When young Frank climbed out too far,
Slipped and fell, and straightways – sank.
Hardly had he hit the water,
Barely had the ripples spread,
When the river started foaming
And we saw with awful dread
Half a dozen snapping snouts
In a hurry to be fed.
Well, we shouted and we threw things,
Lumps of rock and bits of wood,
And young Frank, he cried for help
And tried to swim as best he could,
But the crocs were closing in
And it wasn't any good.
Then at last when all seemed lost,
And it was looking grim,
There was a blur beside us,
And a man leapt in to swim
Like an arrow from a bow:
And his name was Captain Jim.
He was dressed, we later noticed,
In a suit of gleaming white,
And he even had his hat on;
Oh, it was a stirring sight,
As he surged into the fray
Like a charge of dynamite.
With his bare hands and a cricket bat,
He gave the crocs what for;
Hit the six of them for six,
Though I doubt they kept the score.
Then he gave a tow to little Frank
And calmly swam to shore.
And that was the beginning,
The first time he was seen,
In the heat and haze of summer
When the air itself was green
And the river banks were steaming…
And he chose to intervene.
Where he came from is a mystery,
Why he stayed we never knew,
But he took a room at Macey's
And he moored his own canoe
At the wharf beside the warehouse.
And he bought a cockatoo.
Now this, I should remind you,
Was twenty years ago,
In nineteen thirty-one,
When the pace of life was slow,
And Grandpa ran the Copper Mine
And built this bungalow.
And the town was smaller then,
Just some houses and a pier,
And the Steamship Company Office
With a barber's at the rear,
And a visiting policeman
Who came by four times a year.
So it took no time at all
For the tale to get about;
How the stranger with a cricket bat
Had fished young Frankie out,
And hammered fourteen crocodiles
With one enormous clout.
And as the weeks went by,
There were other tales to tell:
How he saved the Baxters’ baby
(With the speed of a gazelle!)
And the Baxters' baby's teddy –
It was needing help as well.
How he stopped a charging wart hog
As it rampaged through the town
(Knocking bikes and fences flying,
Pulling wires and washing down),
With a matadorial flourish
And a matadorial frown.
Well, we followed him about, of course,
Or watched him where he sat
On Macey's back verandah
In his dazzling suit and hat,
With a glass of tea beside him,
And – sometimes – Macey's cat.
We listened to the gossip
Inside the barber's shop.
Some said he was a gambler,
Some said he was a cop,
And oaths were sworn and bets were laid
On just how long he'd stop.
We eavesdropped on the talk
Outside the General Store.
They marvelled at his manicure
And at the clothes he wore.
Whoever did his laundry?
What was that cricket bat for?
In time the summer ended:
The rains began to fall;
Moss clung to the houses
And creepers covered all.
The river was a torrent
And the grass grew eight feet tall.
And still he lived among us
And continued to amaze,
With his quick, explosive actions,
And his steady brainy gaze;
Though he gave no thought to wages,
And he never looked for praise.
And he showed us how to wrestle,
And he taught us how to dive,
And he saved us from the wild bees –
We had blundered on a hive –
When he walloped it to safety
With a perfect cover drive.
He delivered Mrs Foster's fourth,
When Doc Gains fell down drunk.
(The doctor diagnosed himself:
‘I'm drunker than a skunk!’)
Then Captain Jim took care of him,
And tucked him in his bunk.
At Christmas, when a touring troupe
Arrived to do a show,
And the tenor caught a fever
And it was touch-and-go,
Who was it calmly took his place?
Well, I expect you know.
And so the seasons passed,
And the months became a year,
And he saved us from a cheetah,
And he bought us ginger beer,
And he taught us how to make our own…
And when to interfere.
He said: the world's a puzzle,
A game of keys and locks;
A mirror in a mirror,
A box within a box;
And we must do the best we can
And stand up to the shocks.
He told us: that's the moral,
In a world without a plan,
In a world without a meaning,
Designed to puzzle man;
You must do your intervening
In the best way that you can.
Some said he was a writer,
And some, a diplomat;
A traveller, spy, geologist,
And various things like that.
We said he was a cricketer;
How else explain the bat?
‘You'd been on tour,’ said little Frank.
‘And scored a ton,’ said Joe.
‘And when the boat returned to home,’
Said I, ‘you didn't go.’
But when we asked him was it true,
He said, ‘Well… yes and no.’
And he built a bridge that summer,
And he made a mighty kite,
And he saved us from the axeman,
Who was ‘axing’ for a fight,
And he beat the Mayor at poker,
And he caught quail in the night.
He read the weeks-old papers,
And played the gramophone,
And climbed the hills above the town,
And watched the sky alone,
And taught the barber's daughter chess
(Who's now your Auntie Joan).
Then, one evening in September,
As we sat up on the pier,
With our mango-chutney sandwiches
And home-made ginger beer,
And our Steamboat Billy comics…
We saw him disappear.
In his suit of gleaming white
And his loaded-up canoe,
He passed quickly out of sight,
There was nothing we could do.
He had paid his bill at Macey's;
And he took the cockatoo.
Well, we shouted from the quayside
And we ran along the bank,
And scrambled in the mangroves,
Delayed by little Frank;
But he was gone for evermore,
And left behind… a blank.
Yet not quite a blank, perhaps,
For he did leave us a note
And some marbles (c/o Macey's),
And this is what he wrote:
‘Watch out for life's crocodiles,
And try to stay afloat.’
Why he came remained a mystery,
Why he left us, no one knows,
But his talents were amazing
(From his eyebrows to his toes!),
And though it's now all history,
Still his reputation grows:
The voice of Nelson Eddy,
The dash of Errol Flynn,
The brains of Albert Einstein,
The speed of Rin Tin Tin,
The cover drive of Bradman,
The pluck of Gunga Din.
That's how we have remembered,
As the years grow dim
And life slips slowly by
On the wide world's rim,
The man who matched them all:
And his name was Captain Jim.
Now little Frank is bigger,
And Bertie's married Joan,
And Joe's become an engineer
With ‘Wireless-Telephone’,
And I tell bedtime stories
To children of my own.
One final thing, before I go
(I heard your mother call);
A few years back, it must have been,
When you were both quite small,
I bought some cigarette cards
At the Monday Market Stall.
Woodbine's Famous Cricketers,
Fifty in the set;
They were faded, creased and dog-eared,
Badly stained with dust and sweat;
Yet there was a face among them
That I never could forget.
It was him all right, I'd swear it;
It was him without a doubt,
With his bat raised in a flourish
Letting go a mighty clout.
‘Captain James Fitz… (blur),’ it stated:
‘Four-forty-nine not out.’