But all deaf were the spindles, as the mutes, that mutely wait on the Sultan.

“Since we are born, we will live!” so we read on a crimson banner, flouting the crimson clouds, in the van of a riotous red-bonneted mob, racing by us as we came from the glen.  Many more followed:  black, or blood-stained:—.

“Mardi is man’s!”

“Down with landholders!”

“Our turn now!”

“Up rights!  Down wrongs!”

“Bread!  Bread!”

“Take the tide, ere it turns!”

Waving their banners, and flourishing aloft clubs, hammers, and sickles, with fierce yells the crowd ran on toward the palace of Bello.  Foremost, and inciting the rest by mad outcries and gestures, were six masks; “This way!  This way!” they cried,—­“by the wood; by the dark wood!” Whereupon all darted into the groves; when of a sudden, the masks leaped forward, clearing a long covered trench, into which fell many of those they led.  But on raced the masks; and gaining Bello’s palace, and raising the alarm, there sallied from thence a woodland of spears, which charged upon the disordered ranks in the grove.  A crash as of icicles against icebergs round Zembla, and down went the hammers and sickles.  The host fled, hotly pursued.  Meanwhile brave heralds from Bello advanced, and with chaplets crowned the six masks.—­“Welcome, heroes! worthy and valiant!” they cried.  “Thus our lord Bello rewards all those, who to do him a service, for hire betray their kith and their kin.”

Still pursuing our quest, wide we wandered through all the sun and shade of Dominora; but nowhere was Yillah found.

CHAPTER XLV They Behold King Bello’s State Canoe

At last, bidding adieu to King Bello; and in the midst of the lowing of oxen, breaking away from his many hospitalities, we departed for the beach.  But ere embarking, we paused to gaze at an object, which long fixed our attention.

Now, as all bold cavaliers have ever delighted in special chargers, gayly caparisoned, whereon upon grand occasions to sally forth upon the plains:  even so have maritime potentates ever prided themselves upon some holiday galley, splendidly equipped, wherein to sail over the sea.

When of old, glory-seeking Jason, attended by his promising young lieutenants, Castor and Pollux, embarked on that hardy adventure to Colchis, the brave planks of the good ship Argos he trod, its model a swan to behold.

And when Trojan Aeneas wandered West, and discovered the pleasant land of Latium, it was in the fine craft Bis Taurus that he sailed:  its stern gloriously emblazoned, its prow a leveled spear.

And to the sound of sackbut and psaltery, gliding down the Nile, in the pleasant shade of its pyramids to welcome mad Mark, Cleopatra was throned on the cedar quarter-deck of a glorious gondola, silk and satin hung; its silver plated oars, musical as flutes.  So, too, Queen Bess was wont to disport on old Thames.