“Know, then, my lord, that Farnoo is more like ambergris than amber.”

“Is it? then, pray, tell us something on that head.  You know all about ambergris, too, I suppose.”

“Every thing about all things, my lord.  Ambergris is found both on land and at sea.  But especially, are lumps of it picked up on the spicy coasts of Jovanna; indeed, all over the atolls and reefs in the eastern quarter of Mardi.”

“But what is this ambergris?  Braid-Beard,” said Babbalanja.

“Aquovi, the chymist, pronounced it the fragments of mushrooms growing at the bottom of the sea; Voluto held, that like naptha, it springs from fountains down there.  But it is neither.”

“I have heard,” said Yoomy, “that it is the honey-comb of bees, fallen from flowery cliffs into the brine.”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Mohi.  “Do I not know all about it, minstrel?  Ambergris is the petrified gall-stones of crocodiles.”

“What!” cried Babbalanja, “comes sweet scented ambergris from those musky and chain-plated river cavalry?  No wonder, then, their flesh is so fragrant; their upper jaws as the visors of vinaigrettes.”

“Nay, you are all wrong,” cried King Media.

Then, laughing to himself:—­“It’s pleasant to sit by, a demi-god, and hear the surmisings of mortals, upon things they know nothing about; theology, or amber, or ambergris, it’s all the same.  But then, did I always out with every thing I know, there would be no conversing with these comical creatures.

“Listen, old Mohi; ambergris is a morbid secretion of the Spermaceti whale; for like you mortals, the whale is at times a sort of hypochondriac and dyspeptic.  You must know, subjects, that in antediluvian times, the Spermaceti whale was much hunted by sportsmen, that being accounted better pastime, than pursuing the Behemoths on shore.  Besides, it was a lucrative diversion.  Now, sometimes upon striking the monster, it would start off in a dastardly fright, leaving certain fragments in its wake.  These fragments the hunters picked up, giving over the chase for a while.  For in those days, as now, a quarter-quintal of ambergris was more valuable than a whole ton of spermaceti.”

“Nor, my lord,” said Babbalanja, “would it have been wise to kill the fish that dropped such treasures:  no more than to murder the noddy that laid the golden eggs.”

“Beshrew me! a noddy it must have been,” gurgled Mohi through his pipe-stem, “to lay golden eggs for others to hatch.”

“Come, no more of that now,” cried Media.  “Mohi, how long think you, may one of these pipe-bowls last?”

“My lord, like one’s cranium, it will endure till broken.  I have smoked this one of mine more than half a century.”

“But unlike our craniums, stocked full of concretions,” said Babbalanja, our pipe-bowls never need clearing out.”

“True,” said Mohi, “they absorb the oil of the smoke, instead of allowing it offensively to incrust.”