“Yes, that is all,” answered Arthur, “it comes as near to being a cannibal story, as any thing I know. I did not see any one actually roasted and eaten, but if the savages had caught us, I suspect there would have been more to tell, and probably no one here to tell it.”
“But,” persisted Johnny, “the story don’t end there. You haven’t told us about the rest of the voyage, and whether Rokóa found his brother at last.”
“O, that don’t properly belong to this story. According to all artistical rules I ought to end precisely where I have, in order to preserve the unities. But some other time, if you wish, I will tell you all about it.”
“Pray don’t talk of artistical rules,” exclaimed Max, “after showing yourself such an egregious bungler! You had there all the elements of a capital story, and you have just spoiled them.”
“‘How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge,’” cried Browne, “‘come now, unmuzzle your wisdom,’ and specify the blunders of which he has been guilty. I say, with Touchstone, ‘instance briefly, shepherd; come, instance.’”
“Why, in the first place, there was a miserly spirit of economy in regard to his men. He should have invested the narrative with a tragic interest, by killing Rokóa and Barton, at least;—being the narrator he couldn’t kill himself conveniently;—but he might, with good effect have been ‘dangerously wounded.’”
“But suppose,” said Arthur, “that I wanted Rokóa to figure in a future story, and so couldn’t afford to kill him just yet?”
“A miserable apology! it evinces a lamentable poverty of imagination to make one character serve for two distinct tales.”
“Well, a further instance, ‘gentle shepherd,’” cried Browne, “‘a more sounder instance.’”
“Then, again,” resumed Max, with an oracular air, “it was a capital error to make Olla a married woman; what business I should like to know, can a married woman have in a story?—She belongs properly to the dull prosaic region of common life—not to the fairy land of romance. Now the charm of sentiment is as necessary to a perfect tale, as the interest of adventure, or the excitement of conflict, and had Olla been single, there would have been the elements of something beautifully sentimental.”