thus warmly engaged, we heard continually the claps and
episemapsies which those of the two bands reiterated at the taking of their
enemies; and this, joined to the variety of their motions and music, would
have forced smiles out of the most severe Cato, the never-laughing Crassus,
the Athenian man-hater, Timon; nay, even whining Heraclitus, though he
abhorred laughing, the action that is most peculiar to man. For who could
have forborne? seeing those young warriors, with their nymphs and queens,
so briskly and gracefully advance, retire, jump, leap, skip, spring, fly,
vault, caper, move to the right, to the left, every way still in time, so
swiftly, and yet so dexterously, that they never touched one another but
methodically.

As the number of the combatants lessened, the pleasure of the spectators
increased; for the stratagems and motions of the remaining forces were more
singular. I shall only add that this pleasing entertainment charmed us to
such a degree that our minds were ravished with admiration and delight, and
the martial harmony moved our souls so powerfully that we easily believed
what is said of Ismenias's having excited Alexander to rise from table and
run to his arms, with such a warlike melody. At last the golden king
remained master of the field; and while we were minding those dances, Queen
Whims vanished, so that we saw her no more from that day to this.

Then Geber's michelots conducted us, and we were set down among her
abstractors, as her queenship had commanded. After that we returned to the
port of Mateotechny, and thence straight aboard our ships; for the wind was
fair, and had we not hoisted out of hand, we could hardly have got off in
three quarters of a moon in the wane.

Chapter 5.XXVI.

How we came to the island of Odes, where the ways go up and down.

We sailed before the wind, between a pair of courses, and in two days made
the island of Odes, at which place we saw a very strange thing. The ways
there are animals; so true is Aristotle's saying, that all self-moving
things are animals. Now the ways walk there. Ergo, they are then animals.
Some of them are strange unknown ways, like those of the planets; others
are highways, crossways, and byways. I perceived that the travellers and
inhabitants of that country asked, Whither does this way go? Whither does
that way go? Some answered, Between Midy and Fevrolles, to the parish
church, to the city, to the river, and so forth.