Oh, that's one big OH-YEAH! from me! It's fantastic!
In the foreword, Louis' wife says that "One night in a ship's foc'stle, Louis had been trying to work out a particularly romantic poem when several of the other seamen began to tease him about only being able to write "love-stuff." After several hours of work he presented them with "My Three Friends," proving that he indeed had other talents."
To wit:
I have three friends, three faithful friends,
More faithful could not be--
And every night, by the dim firelight,
They come to sit with me.
The first of these is tall and thin
With hollow cheeks, and a toothless grin;
A ghastly stare, and scraggly hair,
And an ugly lump for a chin.
The second of these is short and fat
With beady eyes, like a starving rat--
He was soaked in sin to his oily skin,
And verminous, at that.
The crouching one is of ape-like plan,
Formed like a beast that resembled man:
A freakish thing, with arms a-swing,
And he was the third of that gruesome clan.
The first I stabbed with a Chinese knife,
And left on the white beach sand,
With his ghastly stare, and blood-soaked hair,
And an out-flung, claw-like hand;
The fat one stole a crumbling crust,
That he wolfed in his swineish way--
So I left him there, with his eyes a-glare,
And his head cut off half-way.
We fought to kill, the brute and I,
That the one that lived might eat,
So I killed him too, and made a stew,
And dined on human meat.
And so these three come to visit me,
When without the night winds howl--
The one with the leer, the one with a sneer,
And one with a brutish scowl;
Their lips are dumb, but the three dead come
And crouch by the hollow grate--
The man that I stabbed, the man that I cut,
And the gruesome thing that I ate.
Their lips are sealed, with blood congealed,
But they will not let me be,
And so they haunt, grim, ghastly, and gaunt,
Till death shall set me free.
I have three friends, three faithful friends,
More faithful could not be--
And every night, by the dim firelight,
They come to sit with me.