“I mistrusted it,” sighed Yoomy; “an imprisoned island! full of uncomplaining woes: like many others we must have glided by, unheedingly. Yet of them have I heard. This isle many pass, marking its outward brightness, but dreaming not of the sad secrets here embowered. Haunt of the hopeless! In those inland woods brood Mardians who have tasted Mardi, and found it bitter—the draught so sweet to others!—maidens whose unimparted bloom has cankered in the bud; and children, with eyes averted from life’s dawn—like those new-oped morning blossoms which, foreseeing storms, turn and close.”
“Yoomy’s rendering of the truth,” said Mohi.
“Why land, then?” said Media. “No merry man of sense—no demi-god like me, will do it. Let’s away; let’s see all that’s pleasant, or that seems so, in our circuit, and, if possible, shun the sad.”
“Then we have circled not the round reef wholly,” said Babbalanja, “but made of it a segment. For this is far from being the first sad land, my lord, that we have slighted at your instance.”
“No more. I will have no gloom. A chorus! there, ye paddlers! spread all your sails; ply paddles; breeze up, merry winds!”
And so, in the saffron sunset, we neared another shore.
A gloomy-looking land! black, beetling crags, rent by volcanic clefts; ploughed up with water-courses, and dusky with charred woods. The beach was strewn with scoria and cinders; in dolorous soughs, a chill wind blew; wails issued from the caves; and yellow, spooming surges, lashed the moaning strand.
“Shall we land?” said Babbalanja.
“Not here,” cried Yoomy; “no Yillah here.”
“No,” said Media. “This is another of those lands far better to avoid.”