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- CHAPTER XXVIII.
Babbalanja Regales The Company With Some Sandwiches
It was night. But the moon was brilliant, far and near illuminating the
lagoon.
Over silvery billows we glided.
“Come Yoomy,” said Media, “moonlight and music for aye—a song! a song!
my bird of paradise.”
And folding his arms, and watching the sparkling waters, thus Yoomy
sang:—
A ray of the moon on the dancing waves
Is the step, light step of that beautiful maid:
Mardi, with music, her footfall paves,
And her voice, no voice, but a song in the glade.
“Hold!” cried Media, “yonder is a curious rock. It looks black as a
whale’s hump in blue water, when the sun shines.”
“That must be the Isle of Fossils,” said Mohi. “Ay, my lord, it is.”
“Let us land, then,” said Babbalanja.
And none dissenting, the canoes were put about, and presently we
debarked.
It was a dome-like surface, here and there fringed with ferns,
sprouting from clefts. But at every tide the thin soil seemed gradually
washing into the lagoon.
Like antique tablets, the smoother parts were molded in strange
devices:—Luxor marks, Tadmor ciphers, Palenque inscriptions. In long
lines, as on Denderah’s architraves, were bas-reliefs of beetles,
turtles, ant-eaters, armadilloes, guanos, serpents, tongueless
crocodiles:—a long procession, frosted and crystalized in stone, and
silvered by the moon.
“Strange sight!” cried Media. “Speak, antiquarian Mohi.”
But the chronicler was twitching his antiquarian beard, nonplussed by
these wondrous records. The cowled old father, Piaggi, bending over his
calcined Herculanean manuscripts, looked not more at fault than he.
Said Media, “Expound you, then, sage Babbalanja.” Muffling his face in
his mantle, and his voice in sepulchral tones, Babbalanja thus:—
“These are the leaves of the book of Oro. Here we read how worlds are
made; here read the rise and fall of Nature’s kingdoms. From where this
old man’s furthest histories start, these unbeginning records end.
These are the secret memoirs of times past; whose evidence, at last
divulged, gives the grim lie to Mohi’s gossipings, and makes a rattling
among the dry-bone relics of old Maramma.”
Braid-Beard’s old eyes flashed fire. With bristling beard, he cried,
“Take back the lie you send!”
“Peace! everlasting foes,” cried Media, interposing, with both arms
outstretched. “Philosopher, probe not too deep. All you say is very
fine, but very dark. I would know something more precise. But, prithee,
ghost, unmuffle! chatter no more! wait till you’re buried for that.”
“Ay, death’s cold ague will set us all shivering, my lord. We’ll swear
our teeth are icicles.”
“Will you quit driving your sleet upon us? have done expound these
rocks.”
“My lord, if you desire, I’ll turn over these stone tablets till
they’re dog-eared.”
“Heaven and Mardi!—Go on, Babbalanja.”
“’Twas thus. These were tombs burst open by volcanic throes; and hither
hurled from the lowermost vaults of the lagoon. All Mardi’s rocks are
one wide resurrection. But look. Here, now, a pretty story’s told. Ah,
little thought these grand old lords, that lived and roared before the
flood, that they would come to this. Here, King Media, look and learn.”
He looked; and saw a picture petrified, and plain as any on the
pediments of Petra.
It seemed a stately banquet of the dead, where lords in skeletons were
ranged around a board heaped up with fossil fruits, and flanked with
vitreous vases, grinning like empty skulls. There they sat, exchanging
rigid courtesies. One’s hand was on his stony heart; his other pledged
a lord who held a hollow beaker. Another sat, with earnest face beneath
a mitred brow. He seemed to whisper in the ear of one who listened
trustingly. But on the chest of him who wore the miter, an adder lay,
close-coiled in flint.
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