The Complete Works of Herman Melville: Novels, Short Stories, Poems & Essays. Herman Melville
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“The three avengers fly three bolts,” said Babbalanja. “See if the arrow yet remain astern,” cried Media.
They brought it to him.
“By Oro! Taji on the barb!”
“Then it missed its aim. But I will not mine. And whatever arrows follow, still will I hunt on. Nor does the ghost, that these pale specters would avenge, at all disquiet me. The priest I slew, but to gain her, now lost; and I would slay again, to bring her back. Ah, Yillah! Yillah.”
All started.
Then said Babbalanja, “Aleema’s sons raved not; ’tis true, then, Taji, that an evil deed gained you your Yillah: no wonder she is lost.”
Said Media, unconcernedly, “Perhaps better, Taji, to have kept your secret; but tell no more; I care not to be your foe.”
“Ah, Taji! I had shrank from you,” cried Yoomy, “but for the mark upon your brow. That undoes the tenor of your words. But look, the stars come forth, and who are these? A waving Iris! ay, again they come:— Hautia’s heralds!”
They brought a black thorn, buried in withered rose-balm blossoms, red and blue.
Said Yoomy, “For that which stings, there is no cure,”
“Who, who is Hautia, that she stabs me thus?”
“And this wild sardony mocks your misery.”
“Away! ye fiends.”
“Again a Venus car; and lo! a wreath of strawberries! — Yet fly to me, and be garlanded with joys.”
“Let the wild witch laugh. She moves me not. Neither hurtling arrows nor Circe flowers appall.”
Said Yoomy, “They wait reply.”
“Tell your Hautia, that I know her not; nor care to know. I defy her incantations; she lures in vain. Yillah! Yillah! still I hope!”
Slowly they departed; heeding not my cries no more to follow.
Silence, and darkness fell.
CHAPTER 31
BABBALANJA DISCOURSES IN THE DARK
Next day came and went; and still we onward sailed. At last, by night, there fell a calm, becalming the water of the wide lagoon, and becalming all the clouds in heaven, wailing the constellations. But though our sails were useless, our paddlers plied their broad stout blades. Thus sweeping by a rent and hoar old rock, Vee–Vee, impatient of the calm, sprang to his crow’s nest in the shark’s mouth, and seizing his conch, sounded a blast which ran in and out among the hollows, reverberating with the echoes.
Be sure, it was startling. But more so with respect to one of our paddlers, upon whose shoulders, elevated Vee–Vee, his balance lost, all at once came down by the run. But the heedless little bugler himself was most injured by the fall; his arm nearly being broken.
Some remedies applied, and the company grown composed, Babbalanja thus:—“My lord Media, was there any human necessity for that accident?”
“None that I know, or care to tell, Babbalanja.”
“Vee–Vee,” said Babbalanja, “did you fall on purpose?”
“Not I,” sobbed little Vee–Vee, slinging his ailing arm in its mate.
“Woe! woe to us all, then,” cried Babbalanja; “for what direful events may be in store for us which we can not avoid.”
“How now, mortal?” cried Media; “what now?”
“My lord, think of it. Minus human inducement from without, and minus volition from within, Vee–Vee has met with an accident, which has almost maimed him for life. Is it not terrifying to think of? Are not all mortals exposed to similar, nay, worse calamities, ineffably unavoidable? Woe, woe, I say, to us Mardians! Here, take my last breath; let me give up this beggarly ghost!”
“Nay,” said Media; “pause, Babbalanja. Turn it not adrift prematurely. Let it house till midnight; the proper time for you mortals to dissolve. But, philosopher, if you harp upon Vee–Vee’s mishap, know that it was owing to nothing but his carelessness.”
“And what was that owing to, my lord?”
“To Vee–Vee himself.”
“Then, my lord, what brought such a careless being into Mardi?”
“A long course of generations. He’s some one’s great-great-grandson, doubtless; who was great-great-grandson to some one else; who also had grandsires.”
“Many thanks then to your highness; for you establish the doctrine of Philosophical Necessity.”
“No. I establish nothing; I but answer your questions.”
“All one, my lord: you are a Necessitarian; in other words, you hold that every thing takes place through absolute necessity.”
“Do you take me, then, for a fool, and a Fatalist? Pardie! a bad creed for a monarch, the distributor of rewards and punishments.”
“Right there, my lord. But, for all that, your highness is a Necessitarian, yet no Fatalist. Confound not the distinct. Fatalism presumes express and irrevocable edicts of heaven concerning particular events. Whereas, Necessity holds that all events are naturally linked, and inevitably follow each other, without providential interposition, though by the eternal letting of Providence.”
“Well, well, Babbalanja, I grant it all. Go on.”
“On high authority, we are told that in times past the fall of certain nations in Mardi was prophesied of seers.”
“Most true, my lord,” said Mohi; “it is all down in the chronicles.”
“Ha! ha!” cried Media. “Go on, philosopher.”
Continued Babbalanja, “Previous to the time assigned to their fulfillment, those prophecies were bruited through Mardi; hence, previous to the time assigned to their fulfillment, full knowledge of them may have come to the nations concerned. Now, my lord, was it possible for those nations, thus forwarned, so to conduct their affairs, as at, the prophesied time, to prove false the events revealed to be in store for them?”
“However that may be,” said Mohi, “certain it is, those events did assuredly come to pass:— Compare the ruins of Babbelona with book ninth, chapter tenth, of the chronicles. Yea, yea, the owl inhabits where the seers predicted; the jackals yell in the tombs of the kings.”
“Go on, Babbalanja,” said Media. “Of course those nations could not have resisted their doom. Go on, then: vault over your premises.”
“If it be, then, my lord, that —”
“My very worshipful lord,” interposed Mohi, “is not our philosopher getting off soundings; and may it not be impious to meddle with these things?”
“Were it so, old man, he should have known it. The king of Odo is something more than you mortals.”
“But are we the great gods themselves,” cried Yoomy, “that we discourse of these things.”
“No, minstrel,” said Babbalanja; “and no need have the great gods to discourse of things perfectly comprehended by them, and by themselves ordained. But you and I, Yoomy, are men, and not gods; hence is it for us, and not for them, to take these things for our themes. Nor is there any impiety in the right use of our reason, whatever the issue. Smote with superstition, shall we let it wither and die out, a dead, limb to a live trunk, as the mad devotee’s arm held up motionless for years? Or shall we employ it but for a paw, to help us to our bodily needs, as the brutes use their instinct? Is not reason subtile as quicksilver — live as lightning — a neighing charger