Then entered dwarf-stewards, and major-domos; aloft bearing twisted antlers; all hollowed out in goblets, grouped; announcing dinner.

Loving not, however, to dine with misshapen Mardians, King Media was loth to move.  But Babbalanja, quoting the old proverb—­“Strike me in the face, but refuse not my yams,” induced him to sacrifice his fastidiousness.

So, under a flourish of ram-horn bugles, court and company proceeded to the banquet.

Central was a long, dislocated trunk of a wild Banian; like a huge centipede crawling on its hundred branches, sawn of even lengths for legs.  This table was set out with wry-necked gourds; deformities of calabashes; and shapeless trenchers, dug out of knotty woods.

The first course was shrimp-soup, served in great clamp-shells; the second, lobsters, cuttle-fish, crabs, cockles, cray-fish; the third, hunchbacked roots of the Taro-plant—­plantains, perversely curling at the end, like the inveterate tails of pertinacious pigs; and for dessert, ill-shaped melons, huge as idiots’ heads, plainly suffering from water in the brain.

Now these viands were commended to the favorable notice of all guests; not only for their delicacy of flavor, but for their symmetry.

And in the intervals of the courses, we were bored with hints to admire numerous objects of vertu:  bow-legged stools of mangrove wood; zig-zag rapiers of bone; armlets of grampus-vertebrae; outlandish tureens of the callipees of terrapin; and cannakins of the skulls of baboons.

The banquet over, with many congees, we withdrew.

Returning to the water-side, we passed a field, where dwarfs were laboring in beds of yams, heaping the soil around the roots, by scratching it backward; as a dog.

All things in readiness, Yoky’s valet, a tri-armed dwarf, treated us to a glorious start, by giving each canoe a vigorous triple-push, crying, “away with ye, monsters!”

Nor must it be omitted that just previous to embarking, Vee-Vee, spying a curious looking stone, turned it over, and found a snake.

CHAPTER LXXI A Book From The “Ponderings Of Old Bardianna”

“Now,” said Babbalanja, lighting his trombone as we sailed from the isle, “who are the monsters, we or the cripples?”

“You yourself are a monster, for asking the question,” said Mohi.

“And so, to the cripples I am; though not, old man, for the reason you mention.  But I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.  There is no supreme standard yet revealed, whereby to judge of ourselves; ‘Our very instincts are prejudices,’ saith Alla Mallolla; ‘Our very axioms, and postulates are far from infallible.’  ‘In respect of the universe, mankind is but a sect,’ saith Diloro:  ‘and first principles but dogmas.’  What ethics prevail in the Pleiades?  What things have the synods in Sagittarius decreed?”