CURLY:-
We're away, climbing into the sunrise
For trials or training
Or traffic control for the police,
Or an Air Show at Hendon, or anything;
Who cares;
As long as it's not on the [bad word] on, I'll give you the tour.
These are the Coxswains, two of them,
Each at their ship's wheels.
One steers the ship
But the other's the star,
The Height-Cox
Who handles the elevators,
Riding the waves of the sky.
You can tell who's on duty
By feeling the way that she flies.
Coxswain Hunt is on today:
'Sky' Hunt, a real virtuoso...
Up that ladder now...

Up the canvas shaft and into the hull.
Mind your head...
Those chaps in white jerseys
And sea-boots
Are Riggers.
Theirs are the billowing gas-bags,
Heaving and sighing like living things.
Clammy and stinking and quick to tear,
And theirs are the acres of netting
Restraining the bags
And the hundreds of miles
Of hawsers and wires
And the tight, silver linen
Surrounding our world.
More fabric and rope
Than on several clipper ships,
All in the care of five or so wiry gymnasts
Who are constantly
Roving the lattice of girders
With their patches and glue pots,
Needles and thread...

Smell that smell?
That's the airship smell:
The sweet heavy scent of aircraft dope,
The sour, animal odour of the gas-bags.
There's a whiff of petrol
And everywhere the indefinable
Bouquet of hydrogen.
The text-books tell you
That it's got no smell
But that's rot.
It's all around us, leaking from the bags
Or venting from the valves.
Get too much down you
And your voice goes daft,
Too much more and you pass out cold.
And losing your footing here's a poor idea;
You could fall straight through
The envelope to Glory.
We lost a few like that...

So, if you think there may be gas about,
You keep singing just to check your voice.
There's a Rigger sixty feet above us now
On Starboard longitudinal 'D'.
Out of sight behind Bag 16,
Corporal Parker's tracking down a leak...

PARKER:-
My baby flashes those blue eyes,
And sends me flying in blue skies.
She's got me sky-high in love...
She's got me sky-high in love...
Bloody [bad word] ...Up here, Fred. Found the bugger!

CURLY:-
There's more to see;
So down the keel
For a hundred yards or so.
Then off to the right along this cat-walk,
And down that ladder.
Hold on now. Don't let go,
And don't look down whatever you do.
We're outside the hull
In the fifty knot slip-stream.
Keep going down; you're almost there...

Here we are: an engine gondola,
Too loud for speaking,
An oily fug, the only warm spot up here.
Cramped inside, a pair of Engineers;
The rest is engine:
The moody bellowing god they serve...