Chapter 34

Of The Isle Of Diranda

In good time the shores of Diranda were in sight. And, introductory to
landing, Braid-Beard proceeded to give us some little account of the
island, and its rulers.

As previously hinted, those very magnificent and illustrious lord
seigniors, the lord seigniors Hello and Piko, who between them divided
Diranda, delighted in all manner of public games, especially warlike
ones; which last were celebrated so frequently, and were so fatal in
their results, that, not-withstanding the multiplicity of nuptials
taking place in the isle, its population remained in equilibrio. But,
strange to relate, this was the very object which the lord seigniors
had in view; the very object they sought to compass, by instituting
their games. Though, for the most part, they wisely kept the secret
locked up.

But to tell how the lord seigniors Hello and Piko came to join hands
in this matter.

Diranda had been amicably divided between them ever since the day they
were crowned; one reigning king in the East, the other in the West.
But King Piko had been long harassed with the thought, that the
unobstructed and indefinite increase of his browsing subjects might
eventually denude of herbage his portion of the island. Posterity,
thought he, is marshaling her generations in squadrons, brigades, and
battalions, and ere long will be down upon my devoted empire. Lo! her
locust cavalry darken the skies; her light-troop pismires cover the
earth. Alas! my son and successor, thou wilt inhale choke-damp for
air, and have not a private corner to say thy prayers.

By a sort of arithmetical progression, the probability, nay, the
certainty of these results, if not in some way averted, was proved to
King Piko; and he was furthermore admonished, that war--war to the
haft with King Hello--was the only cure for so menacing an evil.

But so it was, that King Piko, at peace with King Hello, and well
content with, the tranquillity of the times, little relished the idea
of picking a quarrel with his neighbor, and running its risks, in
order to phlebotomize his redundant population.

"Patience, most illustrious seignior," said another of his sagacious
Ahithophels, "and haply a pestilence may decimate the people."

But no pestilence came. And in every direction the young men and
maidens were recklessly rushing into wedlock; and so salubrious the
climate, that the old men stuck to the outside of the turf, and
refused to go under.

At last some Machiavel of a philosopher suggested, that peradventure
the object of war might be answered without going to war; that
peradventure King Hello might be brought to acquiesce in an
arrangement, whereby the men of Diranda might be