Mardi And a Voyage Thither II
.pdf
MARDI: AND A VOYAGE THITHER
Midway meeting, both parties touched poles, then retreated. Very courteous, this; but tantamount to bowing each other out of Mardi; for upon Pike’s tossing a javelin, they rushed in, and each striking his man, 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 look on, and there stand the bards!”
These bards were a row of lean, sallow, old men, in threadbare 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 cracked strains: –
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!
Thus it tapered away.
“Ha, ha!” cried Piko, “how they prick their ears at that!”
171
HERMAN MELVILLE
“Hark ye, my invincibles!” cried Hello. “That pean is for the slain. So all ye who have lives left, spring to it! Die and be glorified! Now’s the time! – Strike up again, my ducklings!”
Thus incited, the survivors staggered to their feet; and hammering away at each others’ sconces, till they rung like a chime of bells going off with a triple-bob-major, they finally succeeded in immortalizing themselves by quenching their mortalities all round; the bards still singing.
“Never mind your music now,” cried Piko. “It’s all over,” said Hello.
“What valiant fellows we have for subjects,” cried Piko. “Ho! grave-diggers, clear the field,” cried Hello.
“Who else is for glory?” cried Piko. “There stand the bards!” cried Hello.
But now there rushed among the crowd a haggard figure, trickling with blood, and wearing a robe, whose edges were burned and blacked by fire. Wielding a club, it ran to and fro, with loud yells menacing all.
A noted warrior this; who, distracted at the death of five sons slain in recent games, wandered from valley to valley, wrestling and fighting.
With wild cries of “The Despairer! The Despairer!” the appalled multitude fled; leaving the two kings frozen on their throne, quaking and quailing, their teeth rattling like dice.
The Despairer strode toward them; when, recovering their senses, they ran; for a time pursued through the woods by the phantom.
CHAPTER XXXVII
TAJI STILL HUNTED,
AND BECKONED
Previous to the kings’ flight, we had plunged into the neighboring woods; and from thence emerging, entered brakes of cane, sprouting from morasses. Soon we heard a whirring, as if three startled partridges had taken wing; it proved three feathered arrows, from three unseen hands.
Gracing us, two buried in the ground, but from Taji’s arm, the third drew blood.
On all sides round we turned; but none were seen. “Still the avengers follow,” said Babbalanja.
“Lo! the damsels three!” cried Yoomy. “Look where they come!”
We joined them by the sumach-wood’s red skirts; and there, they waved their cherry stalks, and heavy bloated cactus leaves, their crimson blossoms armed with nettles; and before us flung shining, yellow, tiger-flowers spotted red.
“Blood!” cried Yoomy, starting, “and leopards on your track!”
And now the syrens blew through long reeds, tasseled with their panicles, and waving verdant scarfs of vines, came dancing toward us, proffering clustering grapes.
173
HERMAN MELVILLE
“For all now yours, Taji; and all that yet may come,” cried Yoomy, “fly to me! I will dance away your gloom, and drown it in inebriation.”
“Away! woe is its own wine. What may be mine, that will I endure, in its own essence to the quick. Let me feel the poniard if it stabs.”
They vanished in the wood; and hurrying on, we soon gained sun-light, and the open glade.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THEY EMBARK FROM DIRANDA
Arrived at the Sign of the Skulls, we found the illustrious lord seigniors at rest from their flight, and once more, quaffing their claret, all thoughts of the specter departed. Instead of rattling their own ivory iiI the heads on their shoulders, they were rattling their dice in the skulls in their hands. And still “Heads,” was the cry, and “Heads,” was the throw.
That evening they made known to my lord Media that an interval of two days must elapse ere the games were renewed, in order to reward the victors, bury their dead, and provide for the execution of an Islander, who under the provocation of a blow, had killed a stranger.
As this suspension of the festivities had been wholly unforeseen, our hosts were induced to withdraw the embargo laid upon our canoes. Nevertheless, they pressed us to remain; saying, that what was to come would far exceed in interest, what had already taken place. The games in prospect being of a naval description, embracing certain hand-to-hand contests in the water between shoals of web-footed warriors.
However, we decided to embark on the morrow.
It was in the cool of the early morning, at that hour when a man’s face can be known, that we set sail from Diranda; and in the ghostly twilight, our thoughts reverted to the phantom
175
HERMAN MELVILLE
that so suddenly had cleared the plain. With interest we hearkened to the recitals of Mohi; who discoursing of the sad end of many brave chieftains in Mardi, made allusion to the youthful Adondo, one of the most famous of the chiefs of the chronicles. In a canoe-fight, after performing prodigies of valor; he was wounded in the head, and sunk to the bottom of the lagoon.
“There is a noble monody upon the death of Adondo,” said Yoomy. “Shall I sing it, my lord? It. is very beautiful; nor could I ever repeat it without a tear.”
“We will dispense with your tears, minstrel,” said Media, “but sing it, if you will.”
And Yoomy sang: –
Departed the pride and the glory of Mardi: The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea, That rolls o’er his corpse with a hush.
His warriors bend over their spears, His sisters gaze upward and mourn. Weep, weep, for Adondo, is dead!
The sun has gone down in a shower; Buried in clouds in the face of the moon; Tears stand in the eyes of the starry skies, And stand in the eyes of the flowers;
And streams of tears are the trickling brooks, Coursing adown the mountains. –
Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi: The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea.
Fast falls the small rain on its bosom that sobs. – Not showers of rain, but the tears of Oro.
176
MARDI: AND A VOYAGE THITHER
“A dismal time it must have been,” yawned Media, “not a dry brook then in Mardi, not a lake that was not moist. Lachrymose rivulets, and inconsolable lagoons! Call you this poetry, minstrel?”
“MohI has something like a tear in his eye,” said Yoomy. “False!” cried Mohi, brushing it aside.
“Who composed that monody?” said Babbalanja. “I have often heard it before.”
“None know, Babbalanja but the poet must be still singing to himself; his songs bursting through the turf in the flowers over his grave.”
“But gentle Yoomy, Adondo is a legendary hero, indefinitely dating back. May not his monody, then, be a spontaneous melody, that has been with us since MardI began? What bard composed the soft verses that our palm boughs sing at even? Nay, Yoomy, that monody was not written by man.”
“Ah! Would that I had been the poet, Babbalanja; for then had I been famous indeed; those lines are chanted through all the isles, by prince and peasant. Yes, Adondo’s monody will pervade the ages, like the low under-tone you hear, when many singers do sing.”
“My lord, my lord,” cried Babbalanja, “but this were to be truly immortal; – to be perpetuated in our works, and not in our names. Let me, oh Oro! be anonymously known!”
CHAPTER XXXIX
WHEREIN
BABBALANJA DISCOURSES
OF HIMSELF
An interval of silence was at last broken by Babbalanja. Pointing to the sun, just gaining the horizon, he exclaimed,
“As old Bardianna says – shut your eyes, and believe.”
“And what may Bardianna have to do with yonder orb?” said Media.
This much, my lord, the astronomers maintain that MardI moves round the sun; which I, who never formally investigated the matter for myself, can by no means credit; unless, plainly seeing one thing, I blindly believe another. Yet even thus blindly does all MardI subscribe to an astronomical system, which not one in fifty thousand can astronomically prove. And not many centuries back, my lord, all MardI did equally subscribe to an astronomical system, precisely the reverse of that which they now believe. But the mass of Mardians have not as much reason to believe the first system, as the exploded one; for all who have eyes must assuredly see, that the sun seems to move, and that MardI seems a fixture, eternally here. But doubtless there are theories which may be true, though the face of things belie them. Hence, in such cases, to the ignorant, disbelief would seem more natural than faith; though
178
MARDI: AND A VOYAGE THITHER
they too often reject the testimony of their own senses, for what to them, is a mere hypothesis. And thus, my lord, is it, that the masts of Mardians do not believe because they know, but because they know not. And they are as ready to receive one thing as another, if it comes from a canonical source. My lord, MardI is as an ostrich, which will swallow augh you offer, even a bar of iron, if placed endwise. And though the iron be indigestible, yet it serves to fill: in feeding, the end proposed. For MardI must have something to exercise its digestion, though that something be forever indigestible. And as fishermen for sport, throw two lumps of bait, united by a cord, to albatrosses floating on the sea; which are greedily attempted to be swallowed, one lump by this fowl, the other by that; but forever are kept reciprocally going up and down in them, by means of the cord; even so, my lord, do I sometimes fancy, that our theorists divert them-selves with the greediness of Mardians to believe.”
“Ha, ha,” cried Media, “methinks this must be AzzageddI who speaks.”
“No, my lord; not long since, AzzageddI received a furlough to go home and warm himself for a while. But this leaves me not alone.”
“How?”
“My lord – for the present putting AzzageddI entirely aside – though I have now been upon terms of close companionship with myself for nigh five hundred moons, I have not yet been able to decide who or what I am. To you, perhaps, I seem Babbalanja; but to myself, I seem not myself. All I am sure of, is a sort of prickly sensation all over me, which they call life; and, occasionally, a headache or a queer conceit admonishes me,
179
HERMAN MELVILLE
that there is something astir in my attic. But how know I, that these sensations are identical with myself? For aught I know, I may be somebody else. At any rate, I keep an eye on myself, as I would on a stranger. There is something going on in me, that is independent of me. Many a time, have I willed to do one thing, and another has been done. I will not say by myself, for I was not consulted about it; it was done instinctively. My most virtuous thoughts are not born of my musings, but spring up in me, like bright fancies to the poet; unsought, spontaneous. Whence they come I know not. I am a blind man pushed from behind; in vain, I turn about to see what propels me. As vanity, I regard the praises of my friends; for what they commend pertains not to me, Babbalanja; but to this unknown something that forces me to it. But why am I, a middle aged Mardian, less prone to excesses than when a youth? The same inducements and allurements are around me. But no; my more ardent passions are burned out; those which are strongest when we are least able to resist them. Thus, then, my lord, it is not so much outer temptations that prevail over us mortals; but inward instincts.”
“A very curious speculation,” said Media. But Babbalanja, have you mortals no moral sense, as they call it?”
“We have. But the thing you speak of is but an after-birth; we eat and drink many months before we are conscious of thoughts. And though some adults would seem to refer all their actions to this moral sense, yet, in reality, it is not so; for, dominant in them, their moral sense bridles their instinctive passions; wherefore, they do not govern themselves, but are governed by their very natures. Thus, some men in youth are
180