Uplift, and couch we our spears, men! Ring hollow on the rocks our war clubs! Bend we our bows, feel the points of our arrows: Aloft, whirl in eddies our sling-nets; To the fight, men of Narvi! Sons of battle! Hunters of men! Raise high your war-wood! Shout Narvi! her groves in the storm!
"By Oro!" cried Media, "but Yoomy has well nigh stirred up allBabbalanja's devils in me. Were I a mortal, I could fight now on apretense. And did any man say me nay, I would charge upon him like aspear-point. Ah, Yoomy, thou and thy tribe have much to answer for; yestir up all Mardi with your lays. Your war chants make men fight; yourdrinking songs, drunkards; your love ditties, fools. Yet there thousittest, Yoomy, gentle as a dove.--What art thou, minstrel, that thysoft, singing soul should so master all mortals? Yoomy, like me, yousway a scepter."
"Thou honorest my calling overmuch," said Yoomy, we minstrels but singour lays carelessly, my lord Media."
"Ay: and the more mischief they make."
"But sometimes we poets are didactic."
"Didactic and dull; many of ye are but too apt to be prosy unlessmischievous."
"Yet in our verses, my lord Media, but few of us purpose harm."
"But when all harmless to yourselves, ye may be otherwise to Mardi."
"And are not foul streams often traced to pure fountains, my lord?"said Babbalanja. "The essence of all good and all evil is in us, notout of us. Neither poison nor honey lodgeth in the flowers on which,side by side, bees and wasps oft alight. My lord, nature is animmaculate virgin, forever standing unrobed before us. True poets butpaint the charms which all eyes behold. The vicious would be viciouswithout them."
"My lord Media," impetuously resumed Yoomy, "I am sensible of athousand sweet, merry fancies, limpid with innocence; yet my enemiesaccount them all lewd conceits."
"There be those in Mardi," said Babbalanja, "who would never ascribeevil to others, did they not find it in their own hearts; believingnone can be different from themselves."
"My lord, my lord!" cried Yoomy. "The air that breathes my music fromme is a mountain air! Purer than others am I; for though not a woman,I feel in me a woman's soul."
"Ah, have done, silly Yoomy," said Media. "Thou art becoming flighty,even as Babbalanja, when Azzageddi is uppermost."
"Thus ever: ever thus!" sighed Yoomy. "They comprehend us not."
"Nor me," said Babbalanja. "Yoomy: poets both, we differ but inseeming; thy airiest conceits are as the shadows of my deepestponderings; though Yoomy soars, and Babbalanja dives, both meet atlast. Not a song you sing, but I have thought its thought; and wheredull Mardi sees but your rose, I unfold its petals, and disclose apearl. Poets are we, Yoomy, in that we dwell without us; we live ingrottoes, palms, and brooks; we ride the sea, we ride the sky; poetsare omnipresent."
CHAPTER XXXIVOf The Isle Of Diranda
In good time the shores of Diranda were in sight. And, introductory tolanding, Braid-Beard proceeded to give us some little account of theisland, and its rulers.
As previously hinted, those very magnificent and illustrious lordseigniors, the lord seigniors Hello and Piko, who between them dividedDiranda, delighted in all manner of public games, especially warlikeones; which last were celebrated so frequently, and were so fatal intheir results, that, not-withstanding the multiplicity of nuptialstaking place in the isle, its population remained in equilibrio. But,strange to relate, this was the very object which the lord seigniorshad in view; the very object they sought to compass, by institutingtheir games. Though, for the most part, they wisely kept the secretlocked up.
But to tell how the lord seigniors Hello and Piko came to join handsin this matter.
Diranda had been amicably divided between them ever since the day theywere crowned; one reigning king in the East, the other in the West.But King Piko had been long harassed with the thought, that theunobstructed and indefinite increase of his browsing subjects mighteventually denude of herbage his portion of the island. Posterity,thought he, is marshaling her generations in squadrons, brigades, andbattalions, and ere long will be down upon my devoted empire. Lo! herlocust cavalry darken the skies; her light-troop pismires cover theearth. Alas! my son and successor, thou wilt inhale choke-damp forair, and have not a private corner to say thy prayers.
By a sort of arithmetical progression, the probability, nay, thecertainty of these results, if not in some way averted, was proved toKing Piko; and he was furthermore admonished, that war--war to thehaft with King Hello--was the only cure for so menacing an evil.
But so it was, that King Piko, at peace with King Hello, and wellcontent with, the tranquillity of the times, little relished the ideaof picking a quarrel with his neighbor, and running its risks, inorder to phlebotomize his redundant population.
"Patience, most illustrious seignior," said another of his sagaciousAhithophels, "and haply a pestilence may decimate the people."
But no pestilence came. And in every direction the young men andmaidens were recklessly rushing into wedlock; and so salubrious theclimate, that the old men stuck to the outside of the turf, andrefused to go under.
At last some Machiavel of a philosopher suggested, that peradventurethe object of war might be answered without going to war; thatperadventure King Hello might be brought to acquiesce in anarrangement, whereby the men of Diranda might be induced to kill offone another voluntarily, in a peaceable manner, without troublingtheir rulers. And to this end, the games before mentioned wereproposed.
"Egad! my wise ones, you have hit it," cried Piko; "but will Hello sayay?"
"Try him, most illustrious seignior," said Machiavel.
So to Hello went embassadors ordinary and extraordinary, and ministersplenipotentiary and peculiar; and anxiously King Piko awaited theirreturn.
The mission was crowned with success.
Said King Hello to the ministers, in confidence:--"The very thing,Dons, the very thing I have wanted. My people are increasing too fast.They keep up the succession too well. Tell your illustrious masterit's a bargain. The games! the games! by all means."
So, throughout the island, by proclamation, they were forthwithestablished; succeeding to a charm.
And the lord seigniors, Hello and Piko, finding their interests thesame, came together like bride and bridegroom; lived in the samepalace; dined off the same cloth; cut from the same bread-fruit; drankfrom the same calabash; wore each other's crowns; and often lockingarms with a charming frankness, paced up and down in their dominions,discussing the prospect of the next harvest of heads.
In his old-fashioned way, having related all this, with many otherparticulars, Mohi was interrupted by Babbalanja, who inquired how thepeople of Diranda relished the games, and how they fancied beingcoolly thinned out in that manner.
To which in substance the chronicler replied, that of the true objectof the games, they had not the faintest conception; but hammered awayat each other, and fought and died together, like jolly good fellows.
"Right again, immortal old Bardianna!" cried Babbalanja.
"And what has the sage to the point this time?" asked Media.
"Why, my lord, in his chapter on "Cracked Crowns," Bardianna, aftermany profound ponderings, thus concludes: In this cracked sphere welive in, then, cracked skulls would seem the inevitable allotments ofmany. Nor will the splintering thereof cease, till this pugnaciousanimal we treat of be deprived of his natural maces: videlicet, hisarms. And right well doth man love to bruise and batter all occiputsin his vicinity."
"Seems to me, our old friend must have been on his stilts that time,"interrupted Mohi.
"No, Braid-Beard. But by way of apologizing for the unusual rigidityof his style in that chapter, he says in a note, that it was writtenupon a straight-backed settle, when he was ill of a lumbago, and acrick in the neck."
"That incorrigible Azzageddi again," said Media, "Proceed with yourquotation, Babbalanja."
"Where was I, Braid-Beard?"
"Battering occiputs at the last accounts," said Mohi.
&nbs
p; "Ah, yes. And right well doth man love to bruise and batter allocciputs in his vicinity; he but follows his instincts; he is but onemember of a fighting world. Spiders, vixens, and tigers all war with arelish; and on every side is heard the howls of hyenas, thethrottlings of mastiffs, the din of belligerant beetles, the buzzingwarfare of the insect battalions: and the shrill cries of lady Tartarsrending their lords. And all this existeth of necessity. To war it is,and other depopulators, that we are beholden for elbow-room in Mardiand for all our parks an gardens, wherein we are wont to expatiate.Come on, then, plague, war, famine and viragos! Come on, I say, forwho shall stay ye? Come on, and healthfulize the census! And moreespecially, oh War! do thou march forth with thy bludgeon! Crackedare, our crowns by nature, and henceforth forever, cracked shall theybe by hard raps."
"And hopelessly cracked the skull, that hatched such a tirade ofnonsense," said Mohi.
"And think you not, old Bardianna knew that?" asked Babbalanja. "Hewrote an excellent chapter on that very subject."
"What, on the cracks in his own pate?"
"Precisely. And expressly asserts, that to those identical cracks, washe indebted for what little light he had in his brain."
"I yield, Babbalanja; your old Ponderer is older than I."
"Ay, ay, Braid-Beard; his crest was a tortoise; and this was themotto:--'I bite, but am not to be bitten.'"
CHAPTER XXXVThey Visit The Lords Piko And Hello
In good time, we landed at Diranda. And that landing was like landingat Greenwich among the Waterloo pensioners. The people were dockedright and left; some without arms; some without legs; not one with atail; but to a man, all had heads, though rather the worse for wear;covered with lumps and contusions.
Now, those very magnificent and illustrious lord seigniors, the lordseigniors Hello and Piko, lived in a palace, round which was a fenceof the cane called Malacca, each picket helmed with a skull, of whichthere were fifty, one to each cane. Over the door was the blended armsof the high and mighty houses of Hello and Piko: a Clavicle crossedover an Ulna.
Escorted to the sign of the Skull-and-Cross-Bones, we received thevery best entertainment which that royal inn could afford. We foundour hosts Hello and Piko seated together on a dais or throne, and nowand then drinking some claret-red wine from an ivory bowl, too largeto have been wrought from an elephant's tusk. They were in gloriousgood spirits, shaking ivory coins in a skull.
"What says your majesty?" said Piko. "Heads or tails?"
"Oh, heads, your majesty," said Hello.
"And heads say I," said Piko.
And heads it was. But it was heads on both sides, so both were sureto win.
And thus they were used to play merrily all day long; beheading thegourds of claret by one slicing blow with their sickle-shapedscepters. Wide round them lay empty calabashes, all feathered, reddyed, and betasseled, trickling red wine from their necks, like thedecapitated pullets in the old baronial barn yard at Kenilworth, thenight before Queen Bess dined with my lord Leicester.
The first compliments over; and Media and Taji having met with areception suitable to their rank, the kings inquired, whether therewere any good javelin-flingers among us: for if that were the case,they could furnish them plenty of sport. Informed, however, that noneof the party were professional warriors, their majesties looked ratherglum, and by way of chasing away the blues, called for some good oldstuff, that was red.
It seems, this soliciting guests, to keep their spears from decaying,by cut and thrust play with their subjects, was a very common thingwith their illustrious majesties.
But if their visitors could not be prevailed upon to spear a subjector so, our hospitable hosts resolved to have a few speared, andotherwise served up for our special entertainment. In a word, ourarrival furnished a fine pretext for renewing their games; though, welearned, that only ten days previous, upward of fifty combatants hadbeen slain at one of these festivals.
Be that as it might, their joint majesties determined upon anotherone; and also upon our tarrying to behold it. We objected, saying wemust depart.
But we were kindly assured, that our canoes had been dragged out ofthe water, and buried in a wood; there to remain till the games wereover.
The day fixed upon, was the third subsequent to our arrival; theinterval being devoted to preparations; summoning from their villagesand valleys the warriors of the land; and publishing the royalproclamations, whereby the unbounded hospitality of the kings'household was freely offered to all heroes whatsoever, who for thelove of arms, and the honor of broken heads, desired to cross battle-clubs, hurl spears, or die game in the royal valley of Deddo.
Meantime, the whole island was in a state of uproarious commotion, andstrangers were daily arriving.
The spot set apart for the festival, was a spacious down, mantled withwhite asters; which, waving in windrows, lay upon the land, like thecream-surf surging the milk of young heifers. But that whiteness, hereand there, was spotted with strawberries; tracking the plain, as ifwounded creatures had been dragging themselves bleeding from somedeadly encounter. All round the down, waved scarlet thickets ofsumach, moaning in the wind, like the gory ghosts environing Pharsaliathe night after the battle; scaring away the peasants, who withbushel-baskets came to the jewel-harvest of the rings of Pompey'sknights.
Beneath the heaped turf of this down, lay thousands of gloriouscorpses of anonymous heroes, who here had died glorious deaths.
Whence, in the florid language of Diranda, they called this field "TheField of Glory."
CHAPTER XXXVIThey Attend The Games
At last the third day dawned; and facing us upon entering the plain,was a throne of red log-wood, canopied by the foliage of a red-dyedPandannus. Upon this throne, purple-robed, reclined those verymagnificent and illustrious lords seigniors, the lord seigniors Helloand Piko. Before them, were many gourds of wine; and crosswise, stakedin the sod, their own royal spears.
In the middle of the down, as if by a furrow, a long, oval space wasmargined of about which, a crowd of spectators were seated. Oppositethe throne, was reserved a clear passage to the arena, defined by air-lines, indefinitely produced from the leveled points of two spears, sopoised by a brace of warriors.
Drawing near, our party was courteously received, and assigned acommodious lounge.
The first encounter was a club-fight between two warriors. Nor casqueof steel, nor skull of Congo could have resisted their blows, had theyfallen upon the mark; for they seemed bent upon driving each other, asstakes, into the earth. Presently, one of them faltered; but hisadversary rushing in to cleave him down, slipped against a guavarind;when the falterer, with one lucky blow, high into the air sent thestumbler's club, which descended upon the crown of a spectator, whowas borne from the plain.
"All one," muttered Pike.
"As good dead as another," muttered Hello.
The second encounter was a hugging-match; wherein two warriors, maskedin Grisly-bear skins, hugged each other to death.
The third encounter was a bumping-match between a fat warrior and adwarf. Standing erect, his paunch like a bass-drum before a drummer,the fat man was run at, head-a-tilt by the dwarf, and sent spinninground on his axis.
The fourth encounter was a tussle between two-score warriors, who allin a mass, writhed like the limbs in Sebastioni's painting of Hades.After obscuring themselves in a cloud of dust, these combatants,uninjured, but hugely blowing, drew off; and separately going amongthe spectators, rehearsed their experience of the fray.
"Braggarts!" mumbled Piko.
"Poltroons!" growled Hello.
While the crowd were applauding, a sober-sided observer, trying to rubthe dust out of his eyes, inquired of an enthusiastic neighbor, "Pray,what was all that about?"
"Fool! saw you not the dust?"
"That I did," said Sober-Sides, again rubbing his eyes, "But I canraise a dust myself."
The fifth encounter was a fight of single sticks between one hundredwarriors, fifty on a side.
I
n a line, the first fifty emerged from the sumachs, their weaponsinterlocked in a sort of wicker-work. In advance marched a priest,bearing an idol with a cracked cocoanut for a head,--Krako, the god ofTrepans. Preceded by damsels flinging flowers, now came on the secondfifty, gayly appareled, weapons poised, and their feet nimbly movingin a martial measure.
Midway meeting, both parties touched poles, then retreated. Verycourteous, this; but tantamount to bowing each other out of Mardi; forupon Pike's tossing a javelin, they rushed in, and each striking hisman, all fell to the ground.
"Well done!" cried Piko.
"Brave fellows!" cried Hello.
"But up and at it again, my heroes!" joined both. "Lo! we kings lookon, and there stand the bards!"
These bards were a row of lean, sallow, old men, in thread-bare robes,and chaplets of dead leaves.
"Strike up!" cried Piko.
"A stave!" cried Hello.
Whereupon, the old croakers, each with a quinsy, sang thus in crackedstrains:--
Quack! Quack! Quack! With a toorooloo whack; Hack away, merry men, hack away. Who would not die brave, His ear smote by a stave? Thwack away, merry men, thwack away! 'Tis glory that calls, To each hero that falls, Hack away, merry men, hack away! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!