the highest pinnacles of commanding capes and promontories, he loved
to hoist his flag. He circled Mardi with his watch-towers: and the
distant voyager passing wild rocks in the remotest waters, was
startled by hearing the tattoo, or the reveille, beating from hump-
backed Bello's omnipresent drum. Among Antartic glaciers, his shrill
bugle calls mingled with the scream of the gulls; and so impressed
seemed universal nature with the sense of his dominion, that the very
clouds in heaven never sailed over Dominora without rendering the
tribute of a shower; whence the air of Dominora was more moist than
that of any other clime.

In all his grand undertakings, King Bello was marvelously assisted by
his numerous fleets of war-canoes; his navy being the largest in
Mardi. Hence his logicians swore that the entire Lagoon was his; and
that all prowling whales, prowling keels, and prowling sharks were
invaders. And with this fine conceit to inspire them, his poets-
laureat composed some glorious old saltwater odes, enough to make your
very soul sing to hear them.

But though the rest of Mardi much delighted to list to such noble
minstrelsy, they agreed not with Bello's poets in deeming the lagoon
their old monarch's hereditary domain.

Once upon a time, the paddlers of the hump-backed king, meeting upon
the broad lagoon certain canoes belonging to the before-mentioned
island of Vivenza; these paddlers seized upon several of their
occupants; and feeling their pulses, declared them born men of
Dominora; and therefore, not free to go whithersoever they would; for,
unless they could somehow get themselves born over again, they must
forever remain subject to Bello. Shed your hair; nay, your skin, if