“How now?” cried Media; “why is the minstrel mournful?—He whose place it is to chase away despondency: not be its minister.”
“Ah, my lord, so thou thinkest. But better can my verses soothe the sad, than make them light of heart. Nor are we minstrels so gay of soul as Mardi deems us. The brook that sings the sweetest, murmurs through the loneliest woods:
The isles hold thee not, thou departed!
From thy bower, now issues no lay:—
In vain we recall perished warblings:
Spring birds, to far climes, wing their way!”
As Yoomy thus sang; unmindful of the lay, with paddle plying, in low, pleasant tones, thus hummed to himself our bowsman, a gamesome wight:—
Ho! merrily ho! we paddlers sail!
Ho! over sea-dingle, and dale!—
Our pulses fly,
Our hearts beat high,
Ho! merrily, merrily, ho!
But a sudden splash, and a shrill, gurgling sound, like that of a fountain subsiding, now broke upon the air. Then all was still, save the rush of the waves by our keels.
“Save him! Put back!”
From his elevated seat, the merry bowsman, too gleefully reaching forward, had fallen into the lagoon.
With all haste, our speeding canoes were reversed; but not till we had darted in upon another darkness than that in which the bowsman fell.
As, blindly, we groped back, deep Night dived deeper down in the sea.