round Mardi for a flavor. It was many moons on the voyage; the
mariners never sailed faster than three knots. Ten would spoil the
best wine ever floated."

Tiffin over, and the blue-sealed calabash all but hid in the great
cloud raised by our pipes, Media proposed to board it in the smoke.
So, goblet in hand, we all gallantly charged, and came off victorious
from the fray.

Then seated again, and serenely puffing in a circle, the
circumnavigator meanwhile pleasantly going the rounds, Media called
upon Mohi for something entertaining.

Now, of all the old gossips in Mardi, surely our delightful old
Diodorus was furnished with the greatest possible variety of
histories, chronicles, anecdotes, memoirs, legends, traditions, and
biographies. There was no end to the library he carried. In himself,
he was the whole history of Mardi, amplified, not abridged, in one
volume.

In obedience, then, to King Media's command, Mohi regaled the company
with a narrative, in substance as follows:--

In a certain quarter of the Archipelago was an island called Minda;
and in Minda were many sorcerers, employed in the social differences
and animosities of the people of that unfortunate land. If a Mindarian
deemed himself aggrieved or insulted by a countryman, he forthwith
repaired to one of these sorcerers; who, for an adequate
consideration, set to work with his spells, keeping himself in the
dark, and directing them against the obnoxious individual. And full