"No, no!", cried Abrazza; "let the day break when it will: but no breakings for us. It's only midnight. This way with the wine; pass it along, my dear Media. We are young yet, my sweet lord; light hearts and heavy purses; short prayers and long rent-rolls. Pass round the Tokay! We demi-gods have all our old age for a dormitory. Come! — Round and round with the flagons! Let them disappear like mile-stones on a race-course!"
"Ah!" murmured Babbalanja, holding his full goblet at arm's length on the board, "not thus with the hapless wight, born with a hamper on his back, and blisters in his palms.-Toil and sleep-sleep and toil, are his days and his nights; he goes to bed with a lumbago, and wakes with the rheumatics;-I know what it is;-he snatches lunches, not dinners, and makes of all life a cold snack! Yet praise be to Oro, though to such men dinners are scarce worth the eating; nevertheless, praise Oro again, a good supper is something. Off jack-boots; nay, off shirt, if you will, and go at it. Hurrah! the fagged day is done: the last blow is an echo. Twelve long hours to sunrise! And would it were an Antarctic night, and six months to to-morrow! But, hurrah! the very bees have their hive, and after a day's weary wandering, hie home to their honey. So they stretch out their stiff legs, rub their lame elbows, and putting their tired right arms in a sling, set the others to fetching and carrying from dishes to dentals, from foaming flagon to the demijohn which never pours out at the end you pour in. Ah! after all, the poorest devil in Mardi lives not in vain. There's a soft side to the hardest oak-plank in the world!"
"Methinks I have heard some such sentimental gabble as this before from my slaves, my lord," said Abrazza to Media. "It has the old gibberish flavor."
"Gibberish, your Highness? Gibberish? I'm full of it-I'm a gibbering ghost, my right worshipful lord! Here, pass your hand through me-here, here, and scorch it where I most burn. By Oro! King! but I will gibe and gibber at thee, till thy crown feels like another skull clapped on thy own. Gibberish? ay, in hell we'll gibber in concert, king! we'll howl, and roast, and hiss together!"
"Devil that thou art, begone! Ho, guards! seize him!"
"Back, curs!" cried Media. "Harm not a hair of his head. I crave pardon, King Abrazza, but no violence must be done Babbalanja."
"Trumpets there!" said Abrazza; "so: the banquet is done-lights for King Media! Good-night, my lord!"
Now, thus, for the nonce, with good cheer, we close. And after many fine dinners and banquets-through light and through shade; through mirth, sorrow, and all-drawing nigh to the evening end of these wanderings wild-meet is it that all should be regaled with a supper.
CHAPTER LXXVIII
They Embark
Next morning, King Abrazza sent frigid word to Media that the day was very fine for yachting; but he much regretted that indisposition would prevent his making one of the party, who that morning doubtless would depart his isle.
"My compliments to your king," said Media to the chamberlains, "and say the royal notice to quit was duly received."
"Take Azzageddi's also," said Babbalanja; "and say, I hope his Highness will not fail in his appointment with me:-the first midnight after he dies; at the grave-yard corner;-there I'll be, and grin again!"
Sailing on, the next land we saw was thickly wooded: hedged round about by mangrove trees; which growing in the water, yet lifted high their boughs. Here and there were shady nooks, half verdure and half water. Fishes rippled, and canaries sung.
"Let us break through, my lord," said Yoomy, "and seek the shore. Its solitudes must prove reviving." "Solitudes they are," cried Mohi.
"Peopled but not enlivened," said Babbalanja. "Hard landing here, minstrel! see you not the isle is hedged?"
"Why, break through, then," said Media. "Yillah is not here."
"I mistrusted it," sighed Yoomy; "an imprisoned island! full of uncomplaining woes: like many others we must have glided by, unheedingly. Yet of them have I heard. This isle many pass, marking its outward brightness, but dreaming not of the sad secrets here embowered. Haunt of the hopeless! In those inland woods brood Mardians who have tasted Mardi, and found it bitter-the draught so sweet to others! — maidens whose unimparted bloom has cankered in the bud; and children, with eyes averted from life's dawn-like those newoped morning blossoms which, foreseeing storms, turn and close."
"Yoomy's rendering of the truth," said Mohi.
"Why land, then?" said Media. "No merry man of sense-no demi-god like me, will do it. Let's away; let's see all that's pleasant, or that seems so, in our circuit, and, if possible, shun the sad."
"Then we have circled not the round reef wholly," said Babbalanja,
"but made of it a segment. For this is far from being the first sad land, my lord, that we have slighted at your instance."
"No more. I will have no gloom. A chorus! there, ye paddlers! spread all your sails; ply paddles; breeze up, merry winds!"
And so, in the saffron sunset, we neared another shore.
A gloomy-looking land! black, beetling crags, rent by volcanic clefts; ploughed up with water-courses, and dusky with charred woods. The beach was strewn with scoria and cinders; in dolorous soughs, a chill wind blew; wails issued from the caves; and yellow, spooming surges, lashed the moaning strand.
"Shall we land?" said Babbalanja.
"Not here," cried Yoomy; "no Yillah here."
"No," said Media. "This is another of those lands far better to avoid."
"Know ye not," said Mohi, "that here are the mines of King Klanko, whose scourged slaves, toiling in their pits, so nigh approach the volcano's bowels, they hear its rumblings? 'Yet they must work on,' cries Klanko, 'the mines still yield!' And daily his slaves' bones are brought above ground, mixed with the metal masses."
"Set all sail there, men! away!"
"My lord," said Babbalanja; "still must we shim the unmitigated evil; and only view the good; or evil so mixed therewith, the mixture's both?"
Half vailed in misty clouds, the harvest-moon now rose; and in that pale and haggard light, all sat silent; each man in his own secret mood: best knowing his own thoughts.
CHAPTER LXXIX
Babbalanja At The Full Of The Moon
"Ho, mortals! Go we to a funeral, that our paddles seem thus muffled?
Up heart, Taji! or does that witch Hautia haunt thee? Be a demi-god once more, and laugh. Her flowers are not barbs; and the avengers' arrows are too blunt to slay. Babbalanja! Mohi! Yoomy! up heart! up heart! — By Oro! I will debark the whole company on the next land we meet. No tears for me. Ha, ha! let us laugh. Ho, Vee-Vee! awake; quick, boy, — some wine! and let us make glad, beneath the glad moon.
Look! it is stealing forth from its clouds. Perdition to Hautia! Long lives, and merry ones to ourselves! Taji, my charming fellow, here's to you:-May your heart be a stone! Ha, ha! — will nobody join me? My laugh is lonely as his who laughed in his tomb. Come, laugh; will no one quaff wine, I say? See! the round moon is abroad."
"Say you so, my lord? then for one, I am with you;" cried Babbalanja.
"Fill me a brimmer. Ah! but this wine leaps through me like a panther.
Ay, let us laugh: let us roar: let us yell! What, if I was sad but just now? Life is an April day, that both laughs and weeps in a breath. But whoso is wise, laughs when he can. Men fly from a groan; but run to a laugh. Vee-Vee! your gourd. My lord, let me help you. Ah, how it sparkles! Cups, cups, Vee-Vee, more cups! Here, Taji, take that: Mohi, take that: Yoomy, take that. And now let us drown away grief. Ha! ha! the house of mourning, is deserted, though of old good cheer kept the funeral guests; and so keep I mine; here I sit by my dead, and replenish your wine cups. Old Mohi, your cup: Yoomy, yours: ha! ha! let us laugh, let us scream! Weeds are put off at a fair; no heart bursts but in secret; it is good to laugh, though the laugh be hollow; and wise to make merry, now and for aye. Laugh, and make friends: weep, and they go. Women sob, and are rid of their grief: men laugh, and retain it. There is laughter in heaven, and laughter in hell. And a deep thought whose language is laughter.