“Well put, Babbalanja; come nearer; here, cross your legs by mine; you have risen a cubit in my regard.  Vee-Vee, bring us that gourd of wine; so, pass it round with the cups.  Now, Yoomy, a song!”

And a song was sung.

And thus did we sail; pleasantly reclining on the mats stretched out beneath the canopied howdah.

At length, we drew nigh to a rock, called Pella, or The Theft.  A high, green crag, toppling over its base, and flinging a cavernous shadow upon the lagoon beneath, bubbling with the moisture that dropped.

Passing under this cliff was like finding yourself, as some sea-hunters unexpectedly have, beneath the open, upper jaw of a whale; which, descending, infallibly entombs you.  But familiar with the rock, our paddlers only threw back their heads, to catch the cool, pleasant tricklings from the mosses above.

Wiping away several glittering beads from his beard, old Mohi turning round where he sat, just outside the canopy, solemnly affirmed, that the drinking of that water had cured many a man of ambition.

“How so, old man?” demanded Media.

“Because of its passing through the ashes of ten kings, of yore buried in a sepulcher, hewn in the heart of the rock.”

“Mighty kings, and famous, doubtless,” said Babbalanja, “whose bones were thought worthy of so noble and enduring as urn.  Pray, Mohi, their names and terrible deeds.”

“Alas! their sepulcher only remains.”

“And, no doubt, like many others, they made that sepul for themselves.  They sleep sound, my word for it, old man.  But I very much question, if, were the rock rent, any ashes would be found.  Mohi, I deny that those kings ever had any bones to bury.”

“Why, Babbalanja,” said Media, “since you intimate that they never had ghosts to give up, you ignore them in toto; denying the very fact of their being even defunct.”

“Ten thousand pardons, my lord, no such discourtesy would I do the anonymous memory of the illustrious dead.  But whether they ever lived or not, it is all the same with them now.  Yet, grant that they lived; then, if death be a deaf-and-dumb death, a triumphal procession over their graves would concern them not.  If a birth into brightness, then Mardi must seem to them the most trivial of reminiscences.  Or, perhaps, theirs may be an utter lapse of memory concerning sublunary things; and they themselves be not themselves, as the butterfly is not the larva.”

Said Yoomy, “Then, Babbalanja, you account that a fit illustration of the miraculous change to be wrought in man after death?”

“No; for the analogy has an unsatisfactory end.  From its chrysalis state, the silkworm but becomes a moth, that very quickly expires.  Its longest existence is as a worm.  All vanity, vanity, Yoomy, to seek in nature for positive warranty to these aspirations of ours.  Through all her provinces, nature seems to promise immortality to life, but destruction to beings.  Or, as old Bardianna has it, if not against us, nature is not for us.”