CHAPTER XXXI.
Babbalanja Discourses In The Dark
Next day came and went; and still we onward sailed. At last, by night, there fell a calm, becalming the water of the wide lagoon, and becalming all the clouds in heaven, wailing the constellations. But though our sails were useless, our paddlers plied their broad stout blades. Thus sweeping by a rent and hoar old rock, Vee-Vee, impatient of the calm, sprang to his crow’s nest in the shark’s mouth, and seizing his conch, sounded a blast which ran in and out among the hollows, reverberating with the echoes.
Be sure, it was startling. But more so with respect to one of our paddlers, upon whose shoulders, elevated Vee-Vee, his balance lost, all at once came down by the run. But the heedless little bugler himself was most injured by the fall; his arm nearly being broken.
Some remedies applied, and the company grown composed, Babbalanja thus:—“My lord Media, was there any human necessity for that accident?”
“None that I know, or care to tell, Babbalanja.”
“Vee-Vee,” said Babbalanja, “did you fall on purpose?”
“Not I,” sobbed little Vee-Vee, slinging his ailing arm in its mate.
“Woe! woe to us all, then,” cried Babbalanja; “for what direful events may be in store for us which we can not avoid.”
“How now, mortal?” cried Media; “what now?”
“My lord, think of it. Minus human inducement from without, and minus volition from within, Vee-Vee has met with an accident, which has almost maimed him for life. Is it not terrifying to think of? Are not all mortals exposed to similar, nay, worse calamities, ineffably unavoidable? Woe, woe, I say, to us Mardians! Here, take my last breath; let me give up this beggarly ghost!”