Mardi and a Voyage Thither

by Herman Melville

  Needless to recount all that then befell; what tribes and caravans we saw; what vast horizons; boundless plains: and sierras, in their every intervale, a nation nestling.

  Enough that still we roamed.

  It was evening; and as the red sun, magnified, launched into the wave, once more, from a wild strand, we launched our three canoes.

  Soon, from her clouds, hooded Night, like a nun from a convent, drew nigh. Rustled her train, yet no spangles were there. But high on her brow, still shone her pale crescent; haloed by bandelets-violet, red, and yellow. So looked the lone watcher through her rainbow-iris; so sad, the night without stars.

  The winds were laid; the lagoon, still, as a prairie of an August noon.

  "Let us dream out the calm," said Media. "One of ye paddlers, watch:

  Ho companions! who's for Cathay?"

  Sleep reigned throughout the canoes, sleeping upon the waters. But nearer and nearer, low-creeping along, came mists and vapors, a thousand; spotted with twinklings of Will-o-Wisps from neighboring shores. Dusky leopards, stealing on by crouches, those vapors seemed.

  Hours silently passed. When startled by a cry, Taji sprang to his feet; against which something rattled; then, a quick splash! and a dark form bounded into the lagoon.

  The dozing watcher had called aloud; and, about to stab, the assassin, dropping his stiletto, plunged.

  Peering hard through those treacherous mists, two figures in a shallop, were espied; dragging another, dripping, from the brine.

  "Foiled again, and foiled forever. No foe's corpse was I."

  As we gazed, in the gloom quickly vanished the shallop; ere ours could be reversed to pursue.

  Then, from the opposite mists, glided a second canoe; and beneath the Iris round the moon, shone now another:-Hautia's flowery flag!

  Vain to wave the sirens off; so still they came.

  One waved a plant of sickly silver-green.

  "The Midnight Tremmella!" cried Yoomy; "the falling-star of flowers! — Still I come, when least foreseen; then flee."

  The second waved a hemlock top, the spike just tapering its final point. The third, a convolvulus, half closed. "The end draws nigh, and all thy hopes are waning." Then they proffered grapes.

  But once more waved off, silently they vanished.

  Again the buried barb tore, at my soul; again Yillah was invoked, but Hautia made reply.

  Slowly wore out the night. But when uprose the sun, fled clouds, and fled sadness.

  CHAPTER LXX

  They Land At Hooloomooloo

  "Keep all three prows, for yonder rock." cried Media; "No sadness on this merry morn! And now for the Isle of Cripples, — even Hooloomooloo."

  "The Isle of Cripples?"

  "Ay; why not? Mohi, tell how they came to club." In substance, this was the narration.

  Averse to the barbarous custom of destroying at birth all infants not symmetrically formed; but equally desirous of removing from their sight those unfortunate beings; the islanders of a neighboring group had long ago established an asylum for cripples; where they lived, subject to their own regulations; ruled by a king of their own election; in short, forming a distinct class of beings by themselves.

  One only restriction was placed upon them: on no account must they quit the isle assigned them. And to the surrounding islanders, so unpleasant the sight of a distorted mortal, that a stranger landing at Hooloomooloo, was deemed a prodigy. Wherefore, respecting any knowledge of aught beyond them, the cripples were well nigh as isolated, as if Hooloomooloo was the only terra-firma extant.

  Dwelling in a community of their own, these unfortunates, who otherwise had remained few in number, increased and multiplied greatly. Nor did successive generations improve in symmetry upon those preceding them.

  Soon, we drew nigh to the isle.

  Heaped up, and jagged with rocks; and, here and there, covered with dwarfed, twisted thickets, it seemed a fit place for its denizens.

  Landing, we were surrounded by a heterogeneous mob; and thus escorted, took our way inland, toward the abode of their lord, King Yoky.

  What a scene!

  Here, helping himself along with two crotched roots, hobbled a dwarf without legs; another stalked before, one arm fixed in the air, like a lightning rod; a third, more active than any, seal-like, flirted a pair of flippers, and went skipping along; a fourth hopped on a solitary pin, at every bound, spinning round like a top, to gaze; while still another, furnished with feelers or fins, rolled himself up in a ball, bowling over the ground in advance.

  With curious instinct, the blind stuck close to our side; with their chattering finger, the deaf and the dumb described angles, obtuse and acute in the air; and like stones rolling down rocky ravines, scores of stammerers stuttered. Discord wedded deformity. All asses' brays were now harmonious memories; all Calibans, as angels.

  Yet for every stare we gave them, three stares they gave us.

  At last, we halted before a tenement of rude stones; crooked Banian boughs its rafters, thatched with fantastic leaves. So rambling and irregular its plan, it seemed thrown up by the eruption, according to sage Mohi, the origin of the isle itself.

  Entering, we saw King Yoky.

  Ah! sadly lacking was he, in all the requisites of an efficient ruler.

  Deaf and dumb he was; and save arms, minus every thing but an indispensable trunk and head. So huge his all-comprehensive mouth, it seemed to swallow up itself.

  But shapeless, helpless as was Yoky, — as king of Hooloomooloo, he was competent; the state being a limited monarchy, of which his Highness was but the passive and ornamental head.

  As his visitors advanced, he fell to gossiping with his fingers: a servitor interpreting. Very curious to note the rapidity with which motion was translated into sound; and the simultaneousness with which meaning made its way through four successive channels to the mind-hand, sight, voice, and tympanum.

  Much amazement His Highness now expressed; horrified his glances.

  "Why club such frights as ye? Herd ye, to keep in countenance; or are afraid of your own hideousness, that ye dread to go alone? Monsters! speak."

  "Great Oro!" cried Mohi, "are we then taken for cripples, by the very King of the Cripples? My lord, are not our legs and arms all right?"

  "Comelier ones were never turned by turners, Mohi. But royal Yoky! in sooth we feel abashed before thee."

  Some further stares were then exchanged; when His Highness sought to know, whether there were any Comparative Anatomists among his visitors.

  "Comparative Anatomists! not one."

  "And why may King Yoky ask that question?" inquired Babbalanja.

  Then was made the following statement.

  During the latter part of his reign, when he seemed fallen into his dotage, the venerable predecessor of King Yoky had been much attached to an old gray-headed Chimpanzee, one day found meditating in the woods. Rozoko was his name. He was very grave, and reverend of aspect; much of a philosopher. To him, all gnarled and knotty subjects were familiar; in his day he had cracked many a crabbed nut. And so in love with his Timonean solitude was Rozoko, that it needed many bribes and bland persuasions, to induce him to desert his mossy, hillside, misanthropic cave, for the distracting tumult of a court.

  But ere long, promoted to high offices, and made the royal favorite, the woodland sage forgot his forests; and, love for love, returned the aged king's caresses. Ardent friends they straight became; dined and drank together; with quivering lips, quaffed long-drawn, sober bumpers; comparing all their past experiences; and canvassing those hidden themes, on which octogenarians dilate.

  For when the fires and broils of youth are passed, and Mardi wears its truer aspect-then we love to think, not act; the present seems more unsubstantial than the past; then, we seek out gray-beards like ourselves; and hold discourse of palsies, hearses, shrouds, and tombs; appoint our undertakers; our mantles gather round us, like to windingsheets; and every night lie down to die. Then, the world's great bubb
le bursts; then, Life's clouds seem sweeping by, revealing heaven to our straining eyes; then, we tell our beads, and murmur paternosters; and in trembling accents cry-"Oro! be merciful."

  So, the monarch and Rozoko.

  But not always were they thus. Of bright, cheerful mornings, they took slow, tottering rambles in the woods; nodding over grotesque walkingsticks, of the Chimpanzee's handiwork. For sedate Rozoko was a dilletante-arborist: an amateur in canes. Indeed, canes at last became his hobby. For half daft with age, sometimes he straddled his good staff and gently rode abroad, to take the salubrious evening air; deeming it more befitting exercise, at times, than walking. Into this menage, he soon initiated his friend, the king; and side by side they often pranced; or, wearying of the saddle, dismounted; and paused to ponder over prostrate palms, decaying across the path. Their mystic rings they counted; and, for every ring, a year in their own calendars.

  Now, so closely did the monarch cleave to the Chimpanzee, that, in good time, summoning his subjects, earnestly he charged it on them, that at death, he and his faithful friend should be buried in one tomb.

  It came to pass, the monarch died; and Poor Rozoko, now reduced to second childhood, wailed most dismally:-no one slept that night in Hooloomooloo. Never did he leave the body; and at last, slowly going round it thrice, he laid him down; close nestled; and noiselessly expired.

  The king's injunctions were remembered; and one vault received them both.

  Moon followed moon; and wrought upon by jeers and taunts, the people of the isle became greatly scandalized, that a base-born baboon should share the shroud of their departed lord; though they themselves had tucked in the aged AEneas fast by the side of his Achates.

  They straight resolved, to build another vault; and over it, a lofty cairn; and thither carry the remains they reverenced.

  But at the disinterring, a sad perplexity arose. For lo surpassing Saul and Jonathan, not even in decay were these fast friends divided.

  So mingled every relic, — ilium and ulna, carpus and metacarpus;-and so similar the corresponding parts, that like the literary remains of Beaumont and of Fletcher, which was which, no spectacles could tell.

  Therefore, they desisted; lest the towering monument they had reared, might commemorate an ape, and not a king.

  Such the narration; hearing which, my lord Media kept stately silence.

  But in courtly phrase, as beseemed him, Babbalanja, turban in hand, thus spoke:-"My concern is extreme, King Yoky, at the embarrassment into which your island is thrown. Nor less my grief, that I myself am not the man, to put an end to it. I could weep that Comparative Anatomists are not so numerous now, as hereafter they assuredly must become; when their services shall be in greater request; when, at the last, last day of all, millions of noble and ignoble spirits will loudly clamor for lost skeletons; when contending claimants shall start up for one poor, carious spine; and, dog-like, we shall quarrel over our own bones."

  Then entered dwarf-stewards, and major-domos; aloft bearing twisted antlers; all hollowed out in goblets, grouped; announcing dinner.

  Loving not, however, to dine with misshapen Mardians, King Media was loth to move. But Babbalanja, quoting the old proverb-"Strike me in the face, but refuse not my yams," induced him to sacrifice his fastidiousness.

  So, under a flourish of ram-horn bugles, court and company proceeded to the banquet.

  Central was a long, dislocated trunk of a wild Banian; like a huge centipede crawling on its hundred branches, sawn of even lengths for legs. This table was set out with wry-necked gourds; deformities of calabashes; and shapeless trenchers, dug out of knotty woods.

  The first course was shrimp-soup, served in great clamp-shells; the second, lobsters, cuttle-fish, crabs, cockles, cray-fish; the third, hunchbacked roots of the Taro-plant-plantains, perversely curling at the end, like the inveterate tails of pertinacious pigs; and for dessert, ill-shaped melons, huge as idiots' heads, plainly suffering from water in the brain.

  Now these viands were commended to the favorable notice of all guests; not only for their delicacy of flavor, but for their symmetry.

  And in the intervals of the courses, we were bored with hints to admire numerous objects of vertu: bow-legged stools of mangrove wood; zig-zag rapiers of bone; armlets of grampus-vertebrae; outlandish tureens of the callipees of terrapin; and cannakins of the skulls of baboons.

  The banquet over, with many congees, we withdrew.

  Returning to the water-side, we passed a field, where dwarfs were laboring in beds of yams, heaping the soil around the roots, by scratching it backward; as a dog.

  All things in readiness, Yoky's valet, a tri-armed dwarf, treated us to a glorious start, by giving each canoe a vigorous triple-push, crying, "away with ye, monsters!"

  Nor must it be omitted that just previous to embarking, Vee-Vee, spying a curious looking stone, turned it over, and found a snake.

  CHAPTER LXXI

  A Book From The "Ponderings Of Old Bardianna"

  "Now," said Babbalanja, lighting his trombone as we sailed from the isle, "who are the monsters, we or the cripples?"

  "You yourself are a monster, for asking the question," said Mohi.

  "And so, to the cripples I am; though not, old man, for the reason you mention. But I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge. There is no supreme standard yet revealed, whereby to judge of ourselves; 'Our very instincts are prejudices,' saith Alla Mallolla; 'Our very axioms, and postulates are far from infallible.'

  'In respect of the universe, mankind is but a sect,' saith Diloro: 'and first principles but dogmas.' What ethics prevail in the Pleiades? What things have the synods in Sagittarius decreed?"

  "Never mind your old authors," said Media. "Stick to the cripples; enlarge upon them."

  "But I have done with them now, my lord; the sermon is not the text.

  Give ear to old Bardianna. I know him by heart. Thus saith the sage in Book X. of the Ponderings, 'Zermalmende,' the title: 'Je pense,' the motto:-'My supremacy over creation, boasteth man, is declared in my natural attitude:-I stand erect! But so do the palm-trees; and the giraffes that graze off their tops. And the fowls of the air fly high over our heads; and from the place where we fancy our heaven to be, defile the tops of our temples. Belike, the eagles, from their eyries look down upon us Mardians, in our hives, even as upon the beavers in their dams, marveling at our incomprehensible ways. And cunning though we be, some things, hidden from us, may not be mysteries to them. Having five keys, hold we all that open to knowledge? Deaf, blind, and deprived of the power of scent, the bat will steer its way unerringly:-could we? Yet man is lord of the bat and the brute; lord over the crows; with whom, he must needs share the grain he garners. We sweat for the fowls, as well as ourselves. The curse of labor rests only on us. Like slaves, we toil: at their good leisure they glean.

  "'Mardi is not wholly ours. We are the least populous part of creation. To say nothing of other tribes, a census of the herring would find us far in the minority. And what life is to us, — sour or sweet, — so is it to them. Like us, they die, fighting death to the last; like us, they spawn and depart. We inhabit but a crust, rough surfaces, odds and ends of the isles; the abounding lagoon being its two-thirds, its grand feature from afar; and forever unfathomable.

  "'What shaft has yet been sunk to the antipodes? What underlieth the gold mines?

  "'But even here, above-ground, we grope with the sun at meridian.

  Vainly, we seek our Northwest Passages, — old alleys, and thoroughfares of the whales.

  "'Oh men! fellow men! we are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below. We breathe but oxygen. Who in Arcturus hath heard of us? They know us not in the Milky Way. We prate of faculties divine: and know not how sprouteth a spear of grass; we go about shrugging our shoulders: when the firmament-arch is over us; we rant of etherealities: and long tarry over our banquets; w
e demand Eternity for a lifetime: when our mortal half-hours too often prove tedious. We know not of what we talk. The Bird of Paradise out-flies our flutterings. What it is to be immortal, has not yet entered into our thoughts. At will, we build our futurities; tier above tier, all galleries full of laureates: resounding with everlasting oratorios! Pater-nosters forever, or eternal Misereres! forgetting that in Mardi, our breviaries oft fall from our hands. But divans there are, some say, whereon we shall recline, basking in effulgent suns, knowing neither Orient nor Occident. Is it so? Fellow men! our mortal lives have an end; but that end is no goal: no place of repose.

  Whatever it may be, it will prove but as the beginning of another race. We will hope, joy, weep, as before; though our tears may be such as the spice-trees shed. Supine we can only be, annihilated.

  "'The thick film is breaking; the ages have long been circling.

  Fellow-men! if we live hereafter, it will not be in lyrics; nor shall we yawn, and our shadows lengthen, while the eternal cycles are revolving. To live at all, is a high vocation; to live forever, and run parallel with Oro, may truly appall us. Toil we not here? and shall we be forever slothful elsewhere? Other worlds differ not much from this, but in degree. Doubtless, a pebble is a fair specimen of the universe.

  "'We point at random. Peradventure at this instant, there are beings gazing up to this very world as their future heaven. But the universe is all over a heaven: nothing but stars on stars, throughout infinities of expansion. All we see are but a cluster. Could we get to Bootes, we would be no nearer Oro, than now he hath no place; but is here. Already, in its unimaginable roamings, our system may have dragged us through and through the spaces, where we plant cities of beryl and jasper. Even now, we may be inhaling the ether, which we fancy seraphic wings are fanning. But look round. There is much to be seen here, and now. Do the archangels survey aught more glorious than the constellations we nightly behold? Continually we slight the wonders, we deem in reserve. We await the present. With marvels we are glutted, till we hold them no marvels at all. But had these eyes first opened upon all the prodigies in the Revelation of the Dreamer, long familiarity would have made them appear, even as these things we see. Now, now, the page is out-spread: to the simple, easy as a primer; to the wise, more puzzling than hieroglyphics. The eternity to come, is but a prolongation of time present: and the beginning may be more wonderful than the end.