44. CHAPTER XLIV.
THROUGH DOMINORA, THEY WANDER AFTER YILLAH.
At last, withdrawing from the presence of King Bello,
we went forth, still intent on our search.
Many brave sights we saw. Fair fields; the whole
island a garden; green hedges all round; neat lodges, thick
as white mice in the landscape; old oak woods, hale and
hearty as ever; old temples buried in ivy; old shrines of
old heroes, deep buried in broad groves of bay trees; old
rivers laden down with heavy-freighted canoes; humped
hills, like droves of camels, piled up with harvests; every
sign and token of a glorious abundance, every sign and token
of generations of renown. Rare sight! fine sight! none
rarer, none finer in Mardi.
But roving on through this ravishing region, we passed
through a corn-field in full beard, where a haggard old
reaper laid down his hook, beseeching charity for the sake
of the gods.—“Bread, bread! or I die mid these sheaves!”
“Thrash out your grain, and want not.”
“Alas, masters, this grain is not mine; I plough, I sow,
I reap, I bind, I stack,—Lord Primo garners.”
Rambling on, we came to a hamlet, hidden in a hollow;
and beneath weeping willows saw many mournful maidens
seated on a bank; beside each, a wheel that was broken.
“Lo, we starve,” they cried, “our distaffs are snapped; no
more may we weave and spin!”
Then forth issued from vaults clamorous crowds of men,
hands tied to their backs.—“Bread! Bread!” they cried.
“The magician hath turned us out from our glen, where we
labored of yore in the days of the merry Green Queen. He
has pinioned us hip and arm that we starve. Like sheep
we die off with the rot.—Curse on the magician. A curse
on his spell.”
Bending our steps toward the glen, roaring down the
rocks we descried a stream from the mountains. But ere
those waters gained the sea, vassal tribute they rendered.
Conducted through culverts and moats, they turned great
wheels, giving life to ten thousand fangs and fingers, whose
gripe no power could withstand, yet whose touch was soft
as the velvet paw of a kitten. With brute force, they
heaved down great weights, then daintily wove and spun;
like the trunk of the elephant, which lays lifeless a river-horse,
and counts the pulses of a moth. On all sides, the
place seemed alive with its spindles. Round and round,
round and round; throwing off wondrous births at every
revolving; ceaseless as the cycles that circle in heaven.
Loud hummed the loom, flew the shuttle like lightning, red
roared the grim forge, rung anvil and sledge; yet no mortal
was seen.
“What ho, magician! Come forth from thy cave!”
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.
