“But for thy one laugh, my lord, how many groans!  Were all happy, or all miserable,—­more tolerable then, than as it is.  But happiness and misery are so broadly marked, that this Mardi may be the retributive future of some forgotten past.—­Yet vain our surmises.  Still vainer to say, that all Mardi is but a means to an end; that this life is a state of probation:  that evil is but permitted for a term; that for specified ages a rebel angel is viceroy.—­Nay, nay.  Oro delegates his scepter to none; in his everlasting reign there are no interregnums; and Time is Eternity; and we live in Eternity now.  Yet, some tell of a hereafter, where all the mysteries of life will be over; and the sufferings of the virtuous recompensed.  Oro is just, they say.—­Then always,—­now, and evermore.  But to make restitution implies a wrong; and Oro can do no wrong.  Yet what seems evil to us, may be good to him.  If he fears not, nor hopes,—­he has no other passion; no ends, no purposes.  He lives content; all ends are compassed in Him; He has no past, no future; He is the everlasting now; which is an everlasting calm; and things that are, have been,—­ will be.  This gloom’s enough.  But hoot! hoot! the night-owl ranges through the woodlands of Maramma; its dismal notes pervade our lives; and when we would fain depart in peace, that bird flies on before:—­ cloud-like, eclipsing our setting suns, and filling the air with dolor.”

“Too true!” cried Yoomy.  “Our calms must come by storms.  Like helmless vessels, tempest-tossed, our only anchorage is when we founder.”

“Our beginnings,” murmured Mohi, “are lost in clouds; we live in darkness all our days, and perish without an end.”

“Croak on, cowards!” cried Media, “and fly before the hideous phantoms that pursue ye.”

“No coward he, who hunted, turns and finds no foe to fight,” said Babbalanja.  “Like the stag, whose brow is beat with wings of hawks, perched in his heavenward antlers; so I, blinded, goaded, headlong, rush! this way and that; nor knowing whither; one forest wide around!”

CHAPTER LXXXII They Sail From Night To Day

Ere long the three canoes lurched heavily in a violent swell.  Like palls, the clouds swept to and fro, hooding the gibbering winds.  At every head-beat wave, our arching prows reared up, and shuddered; the night ran out in rain.

Whither to turn we knew not; nor what haven to gain; so dense the darkness.

But at last, the storm was over.  Our shattered prows seemed gilded.  Day dawned; and from his golden vases poured red wine upon the waters.

That flushed tide rippled toward us; floating from the east, a lone canoe; in which, there sat a mild, old man; a palm-bough in his hand:  a bird’s beak, holding amaranth and myrtles, his slender prow.

“Alma’s blessing upon ye, voyagers! ye look storm-worn.”

“The storm we have survived, old man; and many more, we yet must ride,” said Babbalanja.