Good Pantagruel kept his eyes fixed upon the Mayor, and his ears open to all that he was saying; but, at this last boast of three hundred thousand men in one family, he slightly frowned, and came near losing his usual sweet temper. The wordy Mayor, frightened by the awful eyebrows about to meet together, began to feel a strange thirst; and, making a very low bow, proposed a cup of good-cheer at a neighboring inn.
After some twenty or thirty bumpers each, Pantagruel's party all went on board, and sailed at once, right before the wind, from the Island of Alliances, without stopping to see any more of its queer-nosed people.
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
HOW PANTAGRUEL CAME TO THE ISLANDS OF TOHU AND BOHU.—THE STRANGE DEATH OF WIDENOSTRILS, THE SWALLOWER OF WINDMILLS.
Pantagruel stopped at two islands named Tohu and Bohu, which lay very close together. There had always seemed to be a somebody, or a something, very wonderful in the islands he had already passed; but there happened to be a more wonderful somebody in Tohu and Bohu than he had seen or heard of in any other place. When Pantagruel landed with his friends at the quay of the principal town, where the chief men came to see him, he called for dinner; but behold! there was no dinner to be had. Why? Why, there was nothing to cook the dinner in!
"How is that, my friend?" Pantagruel asked the chief man.
"Because," he answered, "Your Highness has not brought your frying-pan along with you."
"My frying-pan along with me! Why, what do you mean? What has my frying-pan to do with the dinner you are to serve me?"