Mardi And a Voyage Thither II
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CHAPTER XXXIV
OF THE ISLE OF DIRANDA
In good time the shores of Diranda were in sight. And, introductory to landing, Braid–Beard proceeded to give us some little account of the island, and its rulers.
As previously hinted, those very magnificent and illustrious lord seigniors, the lord seigniors Hello and Piko, who between them divided Diranda, delighted in all manner of public games, especially warlike ones; which last were celebrated so frequently, and were so fatal in their results, that, not-withstanding the multiplicity of nuptials taking place in the isle, its population remained in equilibrio. But, strange to relate, this was the very object which the lord seigniors had in view; the very object they sought to compass, by instituting their games. Though, for the most part, they wisely kept the secret locked up.
But to tell how the lord seigniors Hello and Piko came to join hands in this matter.
Diranda had been amicably divided between them ever since the day they were crowned; one reigning king in the East, the other in the West. But King Piko had been long harassed with the thought, that the unobstructed and indefinite increase of his browsing subjects might eventually denude of herbage his portion of the island. Posterity, thought he, is marshaling her generations in squadrons, brigades, and bat-
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talions, and ere long will be down upon my devoted empire. Lo! her locust cavalry darken the skies; her light-troop pismires cover the earth. Alas! my son and successor, thou wilt inhale choke-damp for air, and have not a private corner to say thy prayers.
By a sort of arithmetical progression, the probability, nay, the certainty of these results, if not in some way averted, was proved to King Piko; and he was furthermore admonished, that war – war to the haft 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 well content with, the tranquillity of the times, little relished the idea of picking a quarrel with his neighbor, and running its risks, in order to phlebotomize his redundant population.
“Patience, most illustrious seignior,” said another of his sagacious Ahithophels, “and haply a pestilence may decimate the people.”
But no pestilence came. And in every direction the young men and maidens were recklessly rushing into wedlock; and so salubrious the climate, that the old men stuck to the outside of the turf, and refused to go under.
At last some Machiavel of a philosopher suggested, that peradventure the object of war might be answered without going to war; that peradventure King Hello might be brought to acquiesce in an arrangement, whereby the men of Diranda might be induced to kill off one another voluntarily, in a peaceable manner, without troubling their rulers. And to this end, the games before mentioned were proposed.
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“Egad! my wise ones, you have hit it,” cried Piko; “but will Hello say ay?”
“Try him, most illustrious seignior,” said Machiavel.
So to Hello went embassadors ordinary and extraordinary, and ministers plenipotentiary and peculiar; and anxiously King Piko awaited their return.
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 master it’s a bargain. The games! the games! by all means.” So, throughout the island, by proclamation, they were
forthwith established; succeeding to a charm.
And the lord seigniors, Hello and Piko, finding their interests the same, came together like bride and bridegroom; lived in the same palace; dined off the same cloth; cut from the same bread-fruit; drank from the same calabash; wore each other’s crowns; and often locking arms 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 other particulars, MohI was interrupted by Babbalanja, who inquired how the people of Diranda relished the games, and how they fancied being coolly thinned out in that manner.
To which in substance the chronicler replied, that of the true object of the games, they had not the faintest conception; but hammered away at each other, and fought and died together, like jolly good fellows.
“Right again, immortal old Bardianna!” cried Babbalanja.
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“And what has the sage to the point this time?” asked Me-
dia.
“Why, my lord, in his chapter on “Cracked Crowns,” Bardianna, after many profound ponderings, thus concludes: In this cracked sphere we live in, then, cracked skulls would seem the inevitable allotments of many. Nor will the splintering thereof cease, till this pugnacious animal we treat of be deprived of his natural maces: videlicet, his arms. And right well doth man love to bruise and batter all occiputs in 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 rigidity of his style in that chapter, he says in a note, that it was written upon a straight-backed settle, when he was ill of a lumbago, and a crick in the neck.”
“That incorrigible AzzageddI again,” said Media, “Proceed with your quotation, Babbalanja.”
“Where was I, Braid–Beard?”
“Battering occiputs at the last accounts,” said Mohi.
“Ah, yes. And right well doth man love to bruise and batter all occiputs in his vicinity; he but follows his instincts; he is but one member of a fighting world. Spiders, vixens, and tigers all war with a relish; and on every side is heard the howls of hyenas, the throttlings of mastiffs, the din of belligerant beetles, the buzzing warfare of the insect battalions: and the shrill cries of lady Tartars rending their lords. And all this existeth of necessity. To war it is, and other depopulators, that we are beholden for elbow-room in MardI and for all our parks an gardens, wherein we are wont to expatiate. Come on, then, plague,
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war, famine and viragos! Come on, I say, for who shall stay ye? Come on, and healthfulize the census! And more especially, oh War! do thou march forth with thy bludgeon! Cracked are, our crowns by nature, and henceforth forever, cracked shall they be by hard raps.”
“And hopelessly cracked the skull, that hatched such a tirade of nonsense,” said Mohi.
“And think you not, old Bardianna knew that?” asked Babbalanja. “He wrote an excellent chapter on that very subject.”
“What, on the cracks in his own pate?”
“Precisely. And expressly asserts, that to those identical cracks, was he 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
the motto: – ‘I bite, but am not to be bitten.’”
CHAPTER XXXV
THEY VISIT THE LORDS PIKO
AND HELLO
In good time, we landed at Diranda. And that landing was like landing at Greenwich among the Waterloo pensioners. The people were docked right and left; some without arms; some without legs; not one with a tail; 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 lord seigniors Hello and Piko, lived in a palace, round which was a fence of the cane called Malacca, each picket helmed with a skull, of which there were fifty, one to each cane. Over the door was the blended arms of the high and mighty houses of Hello and Piko: a Clavicle crossed over an Ulna.
Escorted to the sign of the Skull-and-Cross–Bones, we received the very best entertainment which that royal inn could afford. We found our hosts Hello and Piko seated together on a dais or throne, and now and then drinking some claret-red wine from an ivory bowl, too large to have been wrought from an elephant’s tusk. They were in glorious good 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.
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And heads it was. But it was heads on both sides, so both were sure to win.
And thus they were used to play merrily all day long; beheading the gourds of claret by one slicing blow with their sickle-shaped scepters. Wide round them lay empty calabashes, all feathered, red dyed, and betasseled, trickling red wine from their necks, like the decapitated pullets in the old baronial barn yard at Kenilworth, the night before Queen Bess dined with my lord Leicester.
The first compliments over; and Media and TajI having met with a reception suitable to their rank, the kings inquired, whether there were any good javelin-flingers among us: for if that were the case, they could furnish them plenty of sport. Informed, however, that none of the party were professional warriors, their majesties looked rather glum, and by way of chasing away the blues, called for some good old stuff, 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 thing with their illustrious majesties.
But if their visitors could not be prevailed upon to spear a subject or so, our hospitable hosts resolved to have a few speared, and otherwise served up for our special entertainment. In a word, our arrival furnished a fine pretext for renewing their games; though, we learned, that only ten days previous, upward of fifty combatants had been slain at one of these festivals.
Be that as it might, their joint majesties determined upon another one; and also upon our tarrying to behold it. We objected, saying we must depart.
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But we were kindly assured, that our canoes had been dragged out of the water, and buried in a wood; there to remain till the games were over.
The day fixed upon, was the third subsequent to our arrival; the interval being devoted to preparations; summoning from their villages and valleys the warriors of the land; and publishing the royal proclamations, whereby the unbounded hospitality of the kings’ household was freely offered to all heroes whatsoever, who for the love 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, and strangers were daily arriving.
The spot set apart for the festival, was a spacious down, mantled with white asters; which, waving in windrows, lay upon the land, like the cream-surf surging the milk of young heifers. But that whiteness, here and there, was spotted with strawberries; tracking the plain, as if wounded creatures had been dragging themselves bleeding from some deadly encounter. All round the down, waved scarlet thickets of sumach, moaning in the wind, like the gory ghosts environing Pharsalia the night after the battle; scaring away the peasants, who with bushel-baskets came to the jewel-harvest of the rings of Pompey’s knights.
Beneath the heaped turf of this down, lay thousands of glorious corpses of anonymous heroes, who here had died glorious deaths.
Whence, in the florid language of Diranda, they called this field “The Field of Glory.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
THEY 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-dyed Pandannus. Upon this throne, purple-robed, reclined those very magnificent and illustrious lords seigniors, the lord seigniors Hello and Piko. Before them, were many gourds of wine; and crosswise, staked in the sod, their own royal spears.
In the middle of the down, as if by a furrow, a long, oval space was margined of about which, a crowd of spectators were seated. Opposite the throne, was reserved a clear passage to the arena, defined by air-lines, indefinitely produced from the leveled points of two spears, so poised by a brace of warriors.
Drawing near, our party was courteously received, and assigned a commodious lounge.
The first encounter was a club-fight between two warriors. Nor casque of steel, nor skull of Congo could have resisted their blows, had they fallen upon the mark; for they seemed bent upon driving each other, as stakes, into the earth. Presently, one of them faltered; but his adversary rushing in to cleave him down, slipped against a guavarind; when the falterer, with one lucky blow, high into the air sent the stumbler’s club, which descended upon the crown of a spectator, who was borne from the plain.
“All one,” muttered Pike.
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“As good dead as another,” muttered Hello.
The second encounter was a hugging-match; wherein two warriors, masked in Grisly-bear skins, hugged each other to death.
The third encounter was a bumping-match between a fat warrior and a dwarf. Standing erect, his paunch like a bassdrum before a drummer, the fat man was run at, head-a-tilt by the dwarf, and sent spinning round on his axis.
The fourth encounter was a tussle between two-score warriors, who all in 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 among the spectators, rehearsed their experience of the fray.
“Braggarts!” mumbled Piko. “Poltroons!” growled Hello.
While the crowd were applauding, a sober-sided observer, trying to rub the 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 can raise a dust myself.”
The fifth encounter was a fight of single sticks between one hundred warriors, fifty on a side.
In a line, the first fifty emerged from the sumachs, their weapons interlocked in a sort of wicker-work. In advance marched a priest, bearing an idol with a cracked cocoanut for a head – Krako, the god of Trepans. Preceded by damsels flinging flowers, now came on the second fifty, gayly appareled, weapons poised, and their feet nimbly moving in a martial measure.
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