Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II Page 5

  Surprised that the object of our visit should have been thusabandoned, the minstrel ran forward, and sought an explanation.

  Whereupon, Mohi lifted his hands in amazement; exclaiming at theblindness of the eyes, which had beheld the supreme Pontiff ofMaramma, without knowing it.

  The old hermit was no other than the dread Hivohitee; the pagoda, theinmost oracle of the isle.

  CHAPTER XIIIBabbalanja Endeavors To Explain The Mystery

  This Great Mogul of a personage, then; this woundy Aliasuerus; thisman of men; this same Hivohitee, whose name rumbled among themountains like a peal of thunder, had been seen face to face, andtaken for naught, but a bearded old hermit, or at best, some equivocalconjuror.

  So great was his wonderment at the time, that Yoomy could not avoidexpressing it in words.

  Whereupon thus discoursed Babbalanja:

  "Gentle Yoomy, be not astounded, that Hivohitee is so far behind yourprevious conceptions. The shadows of things are greater thanthemselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike tothe substance."

  "But knowing now, what manner of person Hivohitee is," said Yoomy,"much do I long to behold him again."

  But Mohi assured him it was out of the question; that the Pontiffalways acted toward strangers as toward him (Yoomy); and that but onedim blink at the eremite was all that mortal could obtain.

  Debarred thus from a second and more satisfactory interview with one,concerning whom his curiosity had been violently aroused, the minstrelagain turned to Mohi for enlightenment; especially touching thatmagnate's Egyptian reception of him in his aerial den.

  Whereto, the chronicler made answer, that the Pontiff affecteddarkness because he liked it: that he was a ruler of few words, butmany deeds; and that, had Yoomy been permitted to tarry longer withhim in the pagoda, he would have been privy to many strangeattestations of the divinity imputed to him. Voices would have beenheard in the air, gossiping with Hivohitee; noises inexplicableproceeding from him; in brief, light would have flashed out of hisdarkness.

  "But who has seen these things, Mohi?" said Babbalanja, "have you?"

  "Nay."

  "Who then?--Media?--Any one you know?"

  "Nay: but the whole Archipelago has."

  "Thus," exclaimed Babbalanja, "does Mardi, blind though it be in manythings, collectively behold the marvels, which one pair of eyes seesnot."

  CHAPTER XIVTaji Receives Tidings And Omens

  Slowly sailing on, we were overtaken by a shallop; whose inmatesgrappling to the side of Media's, said they came from Borabolla.

  Dismal tidings!--My faithful follower's death.

  Absent over night, that morning early, he had been discovered lifelessin the woods, three arrows in his heart. And the three pale strangerswere nowhere to be found. But a fleet canoe was missing from the beach.

  Slain for me! my soul sobbed out. Nor yet appeased Aleema's manes; noryet seemed sated the avengers' malice; who, doubtless, were on my track.

  But I turned; and instantly the three canoes had been reversed; andfull soon, Jarl's dead hand in mine, had not Media interposed.

  "To death, your presence will not bring life back."

  "And we must on," said Babbalanja. "We seek the living, not the dead."

  Thus they overruled me; and Borabolla's messengers departed.

  Soon evening came, and in its shades, three shadows,--Hautia's heralds.

  Their shallop glided near.

  A leaf tri-foiled was first presented; then another, arrow-shaped.

  Said Yoomy, "Still I swiftly follow, behind revenge."

  Then were showered faded, pallid daffodils.

  Said Yoomy, "Thy hopes are blighted all."

  "Not dead, but living with the life of life. Sirens! I heed ye not."

  They would have showered more flowers; but crowding sail we left them.

  Much converse followed. Then, beneath the canopy all sought repose.And ere long slouched sleep drew nigh, tending dreams innumerable;silent dotting all the downs a shepherd with his flock.

  CHAPTER XVDreams

  Dreams! dreams! golden dreams: endless, and golden, as the floweryprairies, that stretch away from the Rio Sacramento, in whose watersDanae's shower was woven;--prairies like rounded eternities: jonquilleaves beaten out; and my dreams herd like buffaloes, browsing on tothe horizon, and browsing on round the world; and among them, I dashwith my lance, to spear one, ere they all flee.

  Dreams! dreams! passing and repassing, like Oriental empires inhistory; and scepters wave thick, as Bruce's pikes at Bannockburn; andcrowns are plenty as marigolds in June. And far in the background,hazy and blue, their steeps let down from the sky, loom Andes onAndes, rooted on Alps; and all round me, long rushing oceans, rollAmazons and Oronocos; waves, mounted Parthians; and, to and fro, tossthe wide woodlands: all the world an elk, and the forests its antlers.

  But far to the South, past my Sicily suns and my vineyards, stretchesthe Antarctic barrier of ice: a China wall, built up from the sea, andnodding its frosted towers in the dun, clouded sky. Do Tartary andSiberia lie beyond? Deathful, desolate dominions those; bleak and wildthe ocean, beating at that barrier's base, hovering 'twixt freezingand foaming; and freighted with navies of ice-bergs,--warring worldscrossing orbits; their long icicles, projecting like spears to thecharge. Wide away stream the floes of drift ice, frozen cemeteries ofskeletons and bones. White bears howl as they drift from their cubs;and the grinding islands crush the skulls of the peering seals.

  But beneath me, at the Equator, the earth pulses and beats like awarrior's heart; till I know not, whether it be not myself. And mysoul sinks down to the depths, and soars to the skies; and comet-likereels on through such boundless expanses, that methinks all the worldsare my kin, and I invoke them to stay in their course. Yet, like amighty three-decker, towing argosies by scores, I tremble, gasp, andstrain in my flight, and fain would cast off the cables that hamper.

  And like a frigate, I am full with a thousand souls; and as on, on,on, I scud before the wind, many mariners rush up from the orlopbelow, like miners from caves; running shouting across my decks;opposite braces are pulled; and this way and that, the great yardsswing round on their axes; and boisterous speaking-trumpets are heard;and contending orders, to save the good ship from the shoals. Shoals,like nebulous vapors, shoreing the white reef of the Milky Way,against which the wrecked worlds are dashed; strewing all the strand,with their Himmaleh keels and ribs.

  Ay: many, many souls are in me. In my tropical calms, when my shiplies tranced on Eternity's main, speaking one at a time, then all withone voice: an orchestra of many French bugles and horns, rising, andfalling, and swaying, in golden calls and responses.

  Sometimes, when these Atlantics and Pacifics thus undulate round me, Ilie stretched out in their midst: a land-locked Mediterranean, knowingno ebb, nor flow. Then again, I am dashed in the spray of these sounds:an eagle at the world's end, tossed skyward, on the horns of the tempest.

  Yet, again, I descend, and list to the concert.

  Like a grand, ground swell, Homer's old organ rolls its vast volumesunder the light frothy wave-crests of Anacreon and Hafiz; and highover my ocean, sweet Shakespeare soars, like all the larks of thespring. Throned on my seaside, like Canute, bearded Ossian smites hishoar harp, wreathed with wild-flowers, in which warble my Wallers;blind Milton sings bass to my Petrarchs and Priors, and laureate crownme with bays.

  In me, many worthies recline, and converse. I list to St. Paul whoargues the doubts of Montaigne; Julian the Apostate cross-questionsAugustine; and Thomas-a-Kempis unrolls his old black letters for allto decipher. Zeno murmurs maxims beneath the hoarse shout ofDemocritus; and though Democritus laugh loud and long, and the sneerof Pyrrho be seen; yet, divine Plato, and Proclus, and, Verulam are ofmy counsel; and Zoroaster whispered me before I was born. I walk aworld that is mine; and enter many nations, as Mingo Park rested inAfrican cots; I am served like Bajazet: Bacchus my butler, Virgil myminstrel, Philip Sidney my page. My memory is a l
ife beyond birth; mymemory, my library of the Vatican, its alcoves all endlessperspectives, eve-tinted by cross-lights from Middle-Age oriels.

  And as the great Mississippi musters his watery nations: Ohio, withall his leagued streams; Missouri, bringing down in torrents the clansfrom the highlands; Arkansas, his Tartar rivers from the plain;--so,with all the past and present pouring in me, I roll down my billowfrom afar.

  Yet not I, but another: God is my Lord; and though many satellitesrevolve around me, I and all mine revolve round the great centralTruth, sun-like, fixed and luminous forever in the foundationlessfirmament.

  Fire flames on my tongue; and though of old the Bactrian prophets werestoned, yet the stoners in oblivion sleep. But whoso stones me, shallbe as Erostratus, who put torch to the temple; though Genghis Khanwith Cambyses combine to obliterate him, his name shall be extant inthe mouth of the last man that lives. And if so be, down unto death,whence I came, will I go, like Xenophon retreating on Greece, allPersia brandishing her spears in his rear.

  My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of mypen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay thisaudacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and printsdown every letter in my spite. Fain would I hurl off this Dionysiusthat rides me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields Ihear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in this cell. Thefever runs through me like lava; my hot brain burns like a coal; andlike many a monarch, I am less to be envied, than the veriest hind inthe land.

  CHAPTER XVIMedia And Babbalanja Discourse

  Our visiting the Pontiff at a time previously unforeseen, somewhataltered our plans. All search in Maramma for the lost one provingfruitless, and nothing of note remaining to be seen, we returned notto Uma; but proceeded with the tour of the lagoon.

  When day came, reclining beneath the canopy, Babbalanja would fainhave seriously discussed those things we had lately been seeing,which, for all the occasional levity he had recently evinced, seemedvery near his heart.

  But my lord Media forbade; saying that they necessarily included atopic which all gay, sensible Mardians, who desired to live and bemerry, invariably banished from social discourse.

  "Meditate as much as you will, Babbalanja, but say little aloud,unless in a merry and mythical way. Lay down the great maxims ofthings, but let inferences take care of themselves. Never be special;never, a partisan. In safety, afar off, you may batter down afortress; but at your peril you essay to carry a single turret byescalade. And if doubts distract you, in vain will you seek sympathyfrom your fellow men. For upon this one theme, not a few of you free-minded mortals, even the otherwise honest and intelligent, are theleast frank and friendly. Discourse with them, and it is mostlyformulas, or prevarications, or hollow assumption of philosophicalindifference, or urbane hypocrisies, or a cool, civil deference to thedominant belief; or still worse, but less common, a brutality ofindiscriminate skepticism. Furthermore, Babbalanja, on this head,final, last thoughts you mortals have none; nor can have; and, atbottom, your own fleeting fancies are too often secrets to yourselves;and sooner may you get another's secret, than your own. Thus with thewisest of you all; you are ever unfixed. Do you show a tropical calmwithout? then, be sure a thousand contrary currents whirl and eddywithin. The free, airy robe of your philosophy is but a dream, whichseems true while it lasts; but waking again into the orthodox world,straightway you resume the old habit. And though in your dreams youmay hie to the uttermost Orient, yet all the while you abide where youare. Babbalanja, you mortals dwell in Mardi, and it is impossible toget elsewhere."

  Said Babbalanja, "My lord, you school me. But though I dissent fromsome of your positions, I am willing to confess, that this is not thefirst time a philosopher has been instructed by a man."

  "A demi-god, sir; and therefore I the more readily discharge my mindof all seriousness, touching the subject, with which you mortals sovex and torment yourselves."

  Silence ensued. And seated apart, on both sides of the barge, solemnlyswaying, in fixed meditation, to the roll of the waves, Babbalanja,Mohi, and Yoomy, drooped lower and lower, like funeral plumes; and ourgloomy canoe seemed a hearse.

  CHAPTER XVIIThey Regale Themselves With Their Pipes

  "Ho! mortals! mortals!" cried Media. "Go we to bury our dead? Awake,sons of men! Cheer up, heirs of immortality! Ho, Vee-Vee! bring forthour pipes: we'll smoke off this cloud."

  Nothing so beguiling as the fumes of tobacco, whether inhaled throughhookah, narghil, chibouque, Dutch porcelain, pure Principe, orRegalia. And a great oversight had it been in King Media, to haveomitted pipes among the appliances of this voyage that we went.Tobacco in rouleaus we had none; cigar nor cigarret; which little thecompany esteemed. Pipes were preferred; and pipes we often smoked;testify, oh! Vee-Vee, to that. But not of the vile clay, of whichmankind and Etruscan vases were made, were these jolly fine pipes ofours. But all in good time.

  Now, the leaf called tobacco is of divers species and sorts. Not todwell upon vile Shag, Pig-tail, Plug, Nail-rod, Negro-head, Cavendish,and misnamed Lady's-twist, there are the following varieties:--Gold-leaf, Oronoco, Cimaroza, Smyrna, Bird's-eye, James-river, Sweet-scented, Honey-dew, Kentucky, Cnaster, Scarfalati, and famed Shiraz,or Persian. Of all of which, perhaps the last is the best.

  But smoked by itself, to a fastidious wight, even Shiraz is not gentleenough. It needs mitigation. And the cunning craft of so mitigatingeven the mildest tobacco was well understood in the dominions ofMedia. There, in plantations ever covered with a brooding, blue haze,they raised its fine leaf in the utmost luxuriance; almost as broad asthe broad fans of the broad-bladed banana. The stalks of the leafwithdrawn, the remainder they cut up, and mixed with soft willow-bark,and the aromatic leaves of the Betel.

  "Ho! Vee-Vee, bring forth the pipes," cried Media. And forth theycame, followed by a quaint, carved cocoa-nut, agate-lidded, containingammunition sufficient for many stout charges and primings.

  Soon we were all smoking so hard, that the canopied howdah, underwhich we reclined, sent up purple wreaths like a Michigan wigwam.There we sat in a ring, all smoking in council--every pipe a halcyonpipe of peace.

  And among those calumets, my lord Media's showed like the turbanedGrand Turk among his Bashaws. It was an extraordinary pipe, be sure;of right royal dimensions. Its mouth-piece an eagle's beak; its longstem, a bright, red-barked cherry-tree branch, partly covered with aclose network of purple dyed porcupine quills; and toward the upperend, streaming with pennons, like a Versailles flag-staff of acoronation day. These pennons were managed by halyards; and afterlighting his prince's pipe, it was little Vee-Vee's part to run themup toward the mast-head, or mouthpiece, in token that his lord wasfairly under weigh.

  But Babbalanja's was of a different sort; an immense, black,serpentine stem of ebony, coiling this way and that, in endlessconvolutions, like an anaconda round a traveler in Brazil. Smokingthis hydra, Babbalanja looked as if playing upon the trombone.

  Next, gentle Yoomy's. Its stem, a slender golden reed, like musicalPan's; its bowl very merry with tassels.

  Lastly, old Mohi the chronicler's. Its Death's-head bowl forming itslatter end, continually reminding him of his own. Its shank was anostrich's leg, some feathers still waving nigh the mouth-piece.

  "Here, Vee-Vee! fill me up again," cried Media, through the bluevapors sweeping round his great gonfalon, like plumed Marshal Ney,waving his baton in the smoke of Waterloo; or thrice gallant Anglesea,crossing his wooden leg mid the reek and rack of the Apsley Housebanquet.

  Vee-Vee obeyed; and quickly, like a howitzer, the pipe-owl wasreloaded to the muzzle, and King Media smoked on.

  "Ah! this is pleasant indeed," he cried. "Look, it's a calm on thewaters, and a calm in our hearts, as we inhale these sedative odors."

  "So calm," said Babbalanja; "the very gods must be smoking now."

  "And thus," said Media, "we demi-gods hereafter shall cross-leggedsit, and smoke out our eternities. Ah, what a glorious puff! Morta
ls,methinks these pipe-bowls of ours must be petrifactions of roses, soscented they seem. But, old Mohi, you have smoked this many a longyear; doubtless, you know something about their material--the Froth-of-the-Sea they call it, I think--ere my handicraft subjects obtainit, to work into bowls. Tell us the tale."

  "Delighted to do so, my lord," replied Mohi, slowly disentangling hismouth-piece from the braids of his beard. "I have devoted much timeand attention to the study of pipe-bowls, and groped among manylearned authorities, to reconcile the clashing opinions concerning theorigin of the so-called Farnoo, or Froth-of-the-Sea."

  "Well, then, my old centenarian, give us the result of yourinvestigations. But smoke away: a word and a puff go on."

  "May it please you, then, my right worshipful lord, this Farnoo is anunctuous, argillaceous substance; in its natural state, soft,malleable, and easily worked as the cornelian-red clay from the famouspipe-quarries of the wild tribes to the North. But though mostly foundburied in terra-firma, especially in the isles toward the East, thisFarnoo, my lord, is sometimes thrown up by the ocean; in seasons ofhigh sea, being plentifully found on the reefs. But, my lord, likeamber, the precise nature and origin of this Farnoo are points widelymooted."

  "Stop there!" cried Media; "our mouth-pieces are of amber; so, not aword more of the Froth-of-the-Sea, until something be said to clear upthe mystery of amber. What is amber, old man?"

  "A still more obscure thing to trace than the other, my worshipfullord. Ancient Plinnee maintained, that originally it must be a juice,exuding from balsam firs and pines; Borhavo, that, like camphor, it isthe crystalized oil of aromatic ferns; Berzilli, that it is theconcreted scum of the lake Cephioris; and Vondendo, against scores ofantagonists, stoutly held it a sort of bituminous gold, trickling fromantediluvian smugglers' caves, nigh the sea."