Said Babbalanja, “My lord, you school me. But though I dissent from some of your positions, I am willing to confess, that this is not the first time a philosopher has been instructed by a man.”
“A demi-god, sir; and therefore I the more readily discharge my mind of all seriousness, touching the subject, with which you mortals so vex and torment yourselves.”
Silence ensued. And seated apart, on both sides of the barge, solemnly swaying, in fixed meditation, to the roll of the waves, Babbalanja, Mohi, and Yoomy, drooped lower and lower, like funeral plumes; and our gloomy canoe seemed a hearse.
CHAPTER 17
THEY REGALE THEMSELVES WITH THEIR PIPES
“Ho! mortals! mortals!” cried Media. “Go we to bury our dead? Awake, sons of men! Cheer up, heirs of immortality! Ho, Vee–Vee! bring forth our pipes: we’ll smoke off this cloud.”
Nothing so beguiling as the fumes of tobacco, whether inhaled through hookah, narghil, chibouque, Dutch porcelain, pure Principe, or Regalia. And a great oversight had it been in King Media, to have omitted pipes among the appliances of this voyage that we went. Tobacco in rouleaus we had none; cigar nor cigarret; which little the company esteemed. Pipes were preferred; and pipes we often smoked; testify, oh! Vee–Vee, to that. But not of the vile clay, of which mankind and Etruscan vases were made, were these jolly fine pipes of ours. But all in good time.
Now, the leaf called tobacco is of divers species and sorts. Not to dwell upon vile Shag, Pig-tail, Plug, Nail-rod, Negro-head, Cavendish, and misnamed Lady’s-twist, there are the following varieties:— Gold-leaf, Oronoco, Cimaroza, Smyrna, Bird’s-eye, James-river, Sweet-scented, Honey-dew, Kentucky, Cnaster, Scarfalati, and famed Shiraz, or Persian. Of all of which, perhaps the last is the best.
But smoked by itself, to a fastidious wight, even Shiraz is not gentle enough. It needs mitigation. And the cunning craft of so mitigating even the mildest tobacco was well understood in the dominions of Media. There, in plantations ever covered with a brooding, blue haze, they raised its fine leaf in the utmost luxuriance; almost as broad as the broad fans of the broad-bladed banana. The stalks of the leaf withdrawn, the remainder they cut up, and mixed with soft willow-bark, and the aromatic leaves of the Betel.
“Ho! Vee–Vee, bring forth the pipes,” cried Media. And forth they came, followed by a quaint, carved cocoa-nut, agate-lidded, containing ammunition sufficient for many stout charges and primings.
Soon we were all smoking so hard, that the canopied howdah, under which we reclined, sent up purple wreaths like a Michigan wigwam. There we sat in a ring, all smoking in council — every pipe a halcyon pipe of peace.
And among those calumets, my lord Media’s showed like the turbaned Grand Turk among his Bashaws. It was an extraordinary pipe, be sure; of right royal dimensions. Its mouth-piece an eagle’s beak; its long stem, a bright, red-barked cherry-tree branch, partly covered with a close network of purple dyed porcupine quills; and toward the upper end, streaming with pennons, like a Versailles flag-staff of a coronation day. These pennons were managed by halyards; and after lighting his prince’s pipe, it was little Vee–Vee’s part to run them up toward the mast-head, or mouthpiece, in token that his lord was fairly under weigh.
But Babbalanja’s was of a different sort; an immense, black, serpentine stem of ebony, coiling this way and that, in endless convolutions, like an anaconda round a traveler in Brazil. Smoking this hydra, Babbalanja looked as if playing upon the trombone.
Next, gentle Yoomy’s. Its stem, a slender golden reed, like musical Pan’s; its bowl very merry with tassels.
Lastly, old Mohi the chronicler’s. Its Death’s-head bowl forming its latter end, continually reminding him of his own. Its shank was an ostrich’s leg, some feathers still waving nigh the mouth-piece.
“Here, Vee–Vee! fill me up again,” cried Media, through the blue vapors sweeping round his great gonfalon, like plumed Marshal Ney, waving his baton in the smoke of Waterloo; or thrice gallant Anglesea, crossing his wooden eg mid the reek and rack of the Apsley House banquet.
Vee–Vee obeyed; and quickly, like a howitzer, the pipe-owl was reloaded to the muzzle, and King Media smoked on.
“Ah! this is pleasant indeed,” he cried. “Look, it’s a calm on the waters, and a calm in our hearts, as we inhale these sedative odors.”
“So calm,” said Babbalanja; “the very gods must be smoking now.”
“And thus,” said Media, “we demi-gods hereafter shall cross-legged sit, and smoke out our eternities. Ah, what a glorious puff! Mortals, methinks these pipe-bowls of ours must be petrifactions of roses, so scented they seem. But, old Mohi, you have smoked this many a long year; doubtless, you know something about their material — the Froth-of-the-Sea they call it, I think — ere my handicraft subjects obtain it, to work into bowls. Tell us the tale.”
“Delighted to do so, my lord,” replied Mohi, slowly disentangling his mouth-piece from the braids of his beard. “I have devoted much time and attention to the study of pipe-bowls, and groped among many learned authorities, to reconcile the clashing opinions concerning the origin of the so-called Farnoo, or Froth-of-the-Sea.”
“Well, then, my old centenarian, give us the result of your investigations. But smoke away: a word and a puff go on.”
“May it please you, then, my right worshipful lord, this Farnoo is an unctuous, argillaceous substance; in its natural state, soft, malleable, and easily worked as the cornelian-red clay from the famous pipe-quarries of the wild tribes to the North. But though mostly found buried in terra-firma, especially in the isles toward the East, this Farnoo, my lord, is sometimes thrown up by the ocean; in seasons of high sea, being plentifully found on the reefs. But, my lord, like amber, the precise nature and origin of this Farnoo are points widely mooted.”
“Stop there!” cried Media; “our mouth-pieces are of amber; so, not a word more of the Froth-of-the-Sea, until something be said to clear up the mystery of amber. What is amber, old man?”
“A still more obscure thing to trace than the other, my worshipful lord. Ancient Plinnee maintained, that originally it must be a juice, exuding from balsam firs and pines; Borhavo, that, like camphor, it is the crystalized oil of aromatic ferns; Berzilli, that it is the concreted scum of the lake Cephioris; and Vondendo, against scores of antagonists, stoutly held it a sort of bituminous gold, trickling from antediluvian smugglers’ caves, nigh the sea.”
“Why, old Braid–Beard,” cried Media, placing his pipe in rest, “you are almost as erudite as our philosopher here.”
“Much more so, my lord,” said Babbalanja; “for Mohi has somehow picked up all my worthless forgettings, which are more than my valuable rememberings.”
“What say you, wise one?” cried Mohi, shaking his braids, like an enraged elephant with many trunks.
Said Yoomy: “My lord, I have heard that amber is nothing less than the congealed tears of broken-hearted mermaids.”
“Absurd, minstrel,” cried Mohi. “Hark ye; I know what it is. All other authorities to the contrary, amber is nothing more than gold-fishes’ brains, made waxy, then firm, by the action of the sea.”
“Nonsense!” cried Yoomy.
“My lord,” said Braid–Beard, waving his pipe, this thing is just as I say. Imbedded in amber, do we not find little fishes’ fins, porpoise-teeth, sea-gulls’ beaks and claws; nay, butterflies’ wings, and sometimes a topaz?