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 clampshells; 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.