Smoking my pipe on the mountains, sniffing the morning cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along of my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners behind me, and never a beggar forgets
It’s only the pick of the Army
that handles the dear little pets — ‘Tss! ‘Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
of course you will know what to do–hoo! hoo!
Just send in your Chief and surrender —
it’s worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don’t get away from the guns!

They sends us along where the roads are, but mostly we goes where they ain’t:
We’d climb up the side of a sign-board and trust to the stick of the paint:
We’ve chivvied the Naga and Lushai, we’ve given the Afridiman fits,
For we fancies ourselves at two thousand,
with guns that are built in two bits — ‘Tss! ‘Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
of course you will know what to do–hoo! hoo!
Just send in your Chief and surrender —
it’s worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don’t get away from the guns!

If a man doesn’t work, why, we drills him and teaches him how to behave;
If a beggar can’t march, why, we kills him and rattles him into his grave.
You’ve got to stand up to our business and spring without snatching or fuss.
Do you say that you sweat with the field-guns?
By God, you must lather with us — ‘Tss! ‘Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
of course you will know what to do–hoo! hoo!
Just send in your Chief and surrender —
it’s worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don’t get away from the guns!

The eagles is screaming around us, the river’s a-moaning below,
We’re clear of the pine and the oak-scrub,
we’re out on the rocks and the snow,
And the wind is as thin as a whip-lash what carries away to the plains
The rattle and stamp of the lead-mules–
the jinglety-jink of the chains — ‘Tss! ‘Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
of course you will know what to do–hoo! hoo!
Just send in your Chief and surrender —
it’s worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don’t get away from the guns!

There’s a wheel on the Horns of the Morning,
and a wheel on the edge of the Pit,
And a drop into nothing beneath you as straight as a beggar can spit:
With the sweat running out of your shirt-sleeves,
and the sun off the snow in your face,
And half of the men on the drag-ropes
to hold the old gun in her place–‘Tss! ‘Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
of course you will know what to do–hoo! hoo!
Just send in your Chief and surrender —
it’s worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don’t get away from the guns!
Smoking my pipe on the mountains, sniffing the morning cool,
I climbs in my old brown gaiters along of my old brown mule.
The monkey can say what our road was–
the wild-goat he knows where we passed.
Stand easy, you long-eared old darlings!
Out drag-ropes! With shrapnel! Hold fast — ‘Tss! ‘Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns — the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
of course you will know what to do–hoo! hoo!
Just send in your Chief and surrender —
it’s worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don’t get away from the guns!

Screw-Guns, Rudyard Kipling, 1890 (updated by Jonathan Richardson 2022)

A screw-gun is a rifled muzzle-loading mountain gun that could be disassembled (by unscrewing) into four loads (or two bits in the poem) to be carried by man or mule. Hence the reference at the start to an old brown mule and the frequent “‘Tss! ‘Tss!” This was not, as I thought on first reading, meant to be the sound of the gun but the calming noise the driver makes to the mule.