Chapter 34 - Page 2

induced to kill off
one another voluntarily, in a peaceable manner, without troubling
their rulers. And to this end, the games before mentioned were
proposed.

"Egad! my wise ones, you have hit it," cried Piko; "but will Hello say
ay?"

"Try him, most illustrious seignior," said Machiavel.

So to Hello went embassadors ordinary and extraordinary, and ministers
plenipotentiary and peculiar; and anxiously King Piko awaited their
return.

The mission was crowned with success.

Said King Hello to the ministers, in confidence:--"The very thing,
Dons, the very thing I have wanted. My people are increasing too fast.
They keep up the succession too well. Tell your illustrious master
it's a bargain. The games! the games! by all means."

So, throughout the island, by proclamation, they were forthwith
established; succeeding to a charm.

And the lord seigniors, Hello and Piko, finding their interests the
same, came together like bride and bridegroom; lived in the same
palace; dined off the same cloth; cut from the same bread-fruit; drank
from the same calabash; wore each other's crowns; and often locking
arms with a charming frankness, paced up and down in their dominions,
discussing the prospect of the next harvest of heads.

In his old-fashioned way, having related all this, with many other
particulars, Mohi was interrupted by Babbalanja, who inquired how the
people of Diranda relished the games, and how they fancied being
coolly thinned out in that manner.

To which in substance the chronicler replied, that of the true object
of the games, they had not the faintest conception; but hammered away
at each other, and fought and died together, like jolly good fellows.

"Right again, immortal old Bardianna!" cried Babbalanja.

"And what has the sage to the point this time?" asked Media.

"Why, my lord, in his chapter on "Cracked Crowns," Bardianna, after
many profound ponderings, thus concludes: In this cracked sphere we
live in, then, cracked skulls would seem the inevitable allotments of
many. Nor will the splintering thereof cease, till this pugnacious
animal we treat of be deprived of his natural maces: videlicet, his
arms. And right well doth man love to bruise and batter all occiputs
in his vicinity."

"Seems to me, our old friend must have been on his stilts that time,"
interrupted Mohi.

"No, Braid-Beard. But by way of apologizing for the unusual rigidity
of his style in that chapter, he says in a note, that it was written
upon a straight-backed settle, when he was ill of a lumbago, and a
crick in the neck."

"That