The Madman and the Pirate

by R. M. Ballantyne

chin. At this point her mother would have rushed to the rescue, but she was still paralysed! Having reached the chin Lippy became more audacious, stretched forth one of her little hands, and seized Zeppa’s nose. Still he did not move, but when the little brown kitten proceeded to thrust a thumb into one of his eyes, he roused himself, seized the child in his powerful hands, and raised her high above his head; then, lowering her until her little mouth was within reach, he kissed her.

This sufficed to relieve the mother’s fears, so she retired quietly from the scene.

She was not so easily quieted, however, some weeks later, when she beheld Zeppa, after amusing himself one day with Lippy for half an hour, start up, place her on his shoulder, and stalk off towards the mountains. He absented himself for three days on that occasion. Lippy’s mother at first became anxious, then terrified, then desperate. She roused Ongoloo to such a pitch that he at last called a council of war. Some of the head men were for immediate pursuit of the madman; others were of opinion that the little brat was not worth so much trouble; a few wretches even expressed the opinion that they were well rid of her—there being already too many female babies in the community!

While the conflict of opinions was at its fiercest, Zeppa stalked into the midst of them with Lippy on his shoulder, looked round with a benignant expression of countenance, delivered the child to her mother, and went off to his hut without uttering a word. The council immediately dissolved itself and retired humiliated.

It was during one of Zeppa’s occasional absences that the Ratura tribe of natives, as before mentioned, decided to have another brush with the Mountain-men, as they styled their foes.

We are not sure that the word used in the Ratura language was the exact counterpart of the words “brush” and “scrimmage” in ours, but it meant the same thing, namely, the cutting of a number of throats, or the battering in of a number of human skulls unnecessarily.

Of course there was a casus belli. There always is among savage as well as civilised nations, and it is a curious coincidence that the reasons given for the necessity for war are about as comprehensible among the civilised as the savage. Of course among civilised nations these reasons for war are said to be always good. Christians, you know, could not kill each other without good reasons; but is it not strange that among educated people, the reasons given for going to war are often very much the reverse of clear?

The origin of the war which was about to be revived, besides being involved in the mists of antiquity, was somewhat shrouded in the clouds of confusion. Cleared of these clouds, and delivered from those mists, it would have been obviously a just—nay, even a holy war—so both parties said, for they both wanted to fight. Unfortunately no living man could clear away the clouds or mists; nevertheless, as they all saw plainly the exceeding righteousness of the war, they could not in honour, in justice, or in common sense, do otherwise than go at it.

At some remote period of antiquity—probably soon after the dispersion at Babel—it was said that the Mountain-men had said to the Raturans, that it had been reported to them that a rumour had gone abroad that they, the men of Ratura, were casting covetous eyes on the summit of their mountain. The Raturans replied that it had never entered into their heads either to covet or to look at the summit of their mountain, but that, if they had any doubts on the subject, they might send over a deputation to meet a Ratura deputation, and hold a palaver to clear the matter up.