“Then dash your lens!” cried Media.
“Well said, my lord. For all the eyes we get beyond our own, but minister to infelicity. The microscope disgusts us with our Mardi; and the telescope sets us longing for some other world.”
CHAPTER XIX.
They Go Down Into The Catacombs
With a dull flambeau, we now descended some narrow stone steps, to view Oh-Oh’s collection of ancient and curious manuscripts, preserved in a vault.
“This way, this way, my masters,” cried Oh-Oh, aloft, swinging his dim torch. “Keep your hands before you; it’s a dark road to travel.”
“So it seems,” said Babbalanja, wide-groping, as he descended lower and lower. “My lord this is like going down to posterity.”
Upon gaining the vault, forth flew a score or two of bats, extinguishing the flambeau, and leaving us in darkness, like Belzoni deserted by his Arabs in the heart of a pyramid. The torch at last relumed, we entered a tomb-like excavation, at every step raising clouds of dust; and at last stood before long rows of musty, mummyish parcels, so dingy-red, and so rolled upon sticks, that they looked like stiff sausages of Bologna; but smelt like some fine old Stilton or Cheshire.
Most ancient of all, was a hieroglyphical Elegy on the Dumps, consisting of one thousand and one lines; the characters,—herons, weeping-willows, and ravens, supposed to have been traced by a quill from the sea-noddy.
Then there were plenty of rare old ballads:—
“King Kroko, and the Fisher Girl.”
“The Fight at the Ford of Spears.”
“The Song of the Skulls.”