CHAPTER XXXV
They Visit The Lords Piko And Hello


In good time, we landed at Diranda. And that landing was like landing
at Greenwich among the Waterloo pensioners. The people were docked
right and left; some without arms; some without legs; not one with a
tail; but to a man, all had heads, though rather the worse for wear;
covered with lumps and contusions.

Now, those very magnificent and illustrious lord seigniors, the lord
seigniors Hello and Piko, lived in a palace, round which was a fence
of the cane called Malacca, each picket helmed with a skull, of which
there were fifty, one to each cane. Over the door was the blended arms
of the high and mighty houses of Hello and Piko: a Clavicle crossed
over an Ulna.

Escorted to the sign of the Skull-and-Cross-Bones, we received the
very best entertainment which that royal inn could afford. We found
our hosts Hello and Piko seated together on a dais or throne, and now
and then drinking some claret-red wine from an ivory bowl, too large
to have been wrought from an elephant's tusk. They were in glorious
good spirits, shaking ivory coins in a skull.

"What says your majesty?" said Piko. "Heads or tails?"

"Oh, heads, your majesty," said Hello.