Mardi and a Voyage Thither

by Herman Melville

  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.

  "And what has the sage to the point this time?" asked Media.

  "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, 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.

  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.

  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 battleclubs, 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 airlines, 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 st
eel, 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.

  "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 bass-drum 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.

  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 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 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!"

  "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.

  "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 pro-vocation 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-tohand 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 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 Yo
omy 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.

  "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."