Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









THE THREE MULLA-MULGARS




[Illustration: "OH, BUT IF I MIGHT BUT HOLD IT IN MY HAND ONE MOMENT, I
THINK THAT I SHOULD NEVER EVEN SIGH AGAIN!"]




    THE THREE
    MULLA-MULGARS

    BY
    WALTER DE LA MARE

    ILLUSTRATED BY
    DOROTHY P LATHROP

    [Illustration]

    _New York_    ALFRED·A·KNOPF    _Mcmxxv_




    COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
    ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

    _Published, December, 1919
    Second Printing, February, 1925_


    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA





    TO
    F. AND D.
    AND
    L. AND C.




ILLUSTRATIONS


    "Oh, but if I might but hold it in my hand one
      moment, I think I should never even sigh again!"    _Frontispiece_

    "The Queen of the Mountains is in the Forest--with fingers
      of frost"                                                       42

    The Wonderstone                                                   75

    Nod was never left alone                                          80

    He jumped, he reared, he kicked, he plunged, he wriggled,
      he whinnied                                                     90

    Nod danced the Jaqquas' war-dance, ... stooping and
      crooked, "wriggle and stamp"                                   129

    He felt a sudden darkness above his head, and a cold terror
      crept over his skin                                            132

    With sticks and staves and flaring torches they turned on the
      fierce birds that came sweeping and swirling out of the dark   189

    "What is it, brother? Why do you crouch and stare?"              218

    "For there stood as if frozen in the moonlight the monstrous
      silver-haired Meermuts of Mulgarmeerez, guarding the
      enchanted orchards of Tishnar"                                 224

    They feasted on fruits they never before had tasted nor
      knew to grow on earth                                          232

    A Mulgar of a presence and a strangeness, who was without
      doubt of the Kingdom of Assasimmon                             274




THE THREE MULLA-MULGARS


[Illustration]

CHAPTER I


On the borders of the Forest of Munza-mulgar lived once an old grey
fruit-monkey of the name of Mutt-matutta. She had three sons, the eldest
Thumma, the next Thimbulla, and the youngest, who was a Nizza-neela,
Ummanodda. And they called each other for short, Thumb, Thimble, and
Nod. The rickety, tumble-down old wooden hut in which they lived had
been built 319 Munza years before by a traveller, a Portugall or
Portingal, lost in the forest 22,997 leagues from home. After he was
dead, there came scrambling along on his fours one peaceful evening a
Mulgar (or, as we say in English, a monkey) named Zebbah. At first sight
of the hut he held his head on one side awhile, and stood quite still,
listening, his broad-nosed face lit up in the blaze of the setting sun.
He then hobbled a little nearer, and peeped into the hut. Whereupon he
hobbled away a little, but soon came back and peeped again. At last he
ventured near, and, pushing back the tangle of creepers and matted
grasses, groped through the door and went in. And there, in a dark
corner, lay the Portingal's little heap of bones.

The hut was dry as tinder. It had in it a broken fire-stone, a kind of
chest or cupboard, a table, and a stool, both rough and insect-bitten,
but still strong. Zebbah sniffed and grunted, and pushed and peered
about. And he found all manner of strange and precious stuff half buried
in the hut--pots for Subbub; pestles and basins for Manaka-cake, etc.;
three bags of great beads, clear, blue, and emerald; an old rusty
musket; nine ephelantoes' tusks; a bag of Margarita stones; and many
other things, besides cloth and spider-silk and dried-up fruits and
fishes. He made his dwelling there, and died there. This Mulgar, Zebbah,
was Mutta-matutta's great-great-great-grandfather. Dead and gone were
all.

Now, one day when Mutta-matutta was young, and her father had gone into
the forest for Sudd-fruit, there came limping along a most singular
Mulgar towards the house. He was bent and shrunken, shivering and
coughing, but he walked as men walk, his nut-shaped head bending up out
of a big red jacket. His shoulder and the top of his head were worn bare
by the rubbing of the bundle he carried. And behind him came stumbling
along another Mulgar, his servant, with a few rags tied round his body,
who could not at first speak, his tongue was so much swollen from his
having bitten in the dark a poison-spider in his nuts. The name of his
master was Seelem; his own name was Glint. This Seelem fell very sick.
Mutta-matutta nursed him night and day, with the sourest monkey-physic.
He was pulled crooked with pain and the shivers, or rain-fever. The tips
of the hairs on his head had in his wanderings turned snow-white. But he
bore his pain and his sickness (and his physic) without one groan of
complaint.

And Glint, who fetched water and gathered sticks and nuts, and
helped Mutta-matutta, told her that his master, Seelem, was a
Mulla-mulgar--that is, a Mulgar of the Blood Royal--and own brother
to Assasimmon, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar.

He told her, also, that his master had wearied of Assasimmon's
valley-palace, his fine food and dishes, his music of shells and
strings, his countless Mulgar-slaves, beasts, and groves and gardens;
and that, having chosen three servants, Jacca, Glutt, and himself, he
had left his brother's valleys, to discover what lay beyond the
Arakkaboa Mountains. But Jacca had perished of frost-bite on the
southern slopes of the Peak of Tishnar, and Glutt had been eaten by the
Minimuls.

He was very silent and gloomy, this Mulla-mulgar, Seelem, but glad to
rest his bruised and weary bones in the hut. And when Mutta-matutta's
father died from sleeping in the moon-mist at Sudd-ripening, Seelem
untied his travelling bundle and made his home in the hut. Mutta-matutta
was a lonely and rather sad Mulgar, so at this she rejoiced, for she had
grown from fearing to love the royal old wanderer. And she helped him to
put away all that was in his bundles into the Portingal's chest--three
shirts of cotton; two red jackets, like his own, with metal hooks; a
sheep's-coat, with ivory buttons and pocket-flaps; three skin shoes (for
one had been lost out of his bundle in the forest); a cap of Mamasul
skin (very precious); besides knives, fire-strikers, a hollow cup of
ivory, magic physic-powder, two combs of Impaleena-horn, a green
serpent-skin for sweetening water, etc., and, beyond and above all, the
milk-white Wonderstone of Tishnar.

Here they lived, Seelem and Mutta (as he called her), in the Portingal's
old hut, for thirteen years. And Mutta was happy with Seelem and her
three sons, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod. They had a water-spring,
honey-boxes or baskets for the bees in the Ollaconda-trees, a shed or
huddle of green branches, for Glint, and a big patch of Ummuz-cane. Nod
slept in a kind of hole or burrow in the roof, with a tiny peeping-hole,
from which he used to scare the birds from his father's Ummuz.

Mutta wished only that Seelem was not quite so grim and broody; that the
Munza-mulgars (forest-monkeys) would not come stealing her Subbub and
honey; and that the Portingal's hut stood quite out of the silvery
moon-mist that rose from the swamp; for she suffered (as do most
fruit-monkeys) from the bones-ache. Seelem was gentle and easy in his
own moody way with Mutta and his three sons, but, most of all, he
cheered his heart with tiny Nod, the Nizza-neela. Sometimes all day long
this old travel-worn Mulla-mulgar never uttered a sound, save at
evening, when he sang or droned his evening hymn to Tishnar.[1] He kept
a thick stick, which he called his Guzza, to punish his three sons when
they were idle and sullen, or gluttonous, or with Munza tricks pestered
their mother. And he never favoured Nod beyond the others more than all
good fathers favour the youngest, the littlest, and the gaysomest of
their children.

    [1] Tishnar is a very ancient word in Munza, and means that
        which cannot be thought about in words, or told, or
        expressed. So all the wonderful, secret, and quiet world
        beyond the Mulgars' lives is Tishnar--wind and stars, too,
        the sea and the endless unknown. But here it is only the
        Beautiful One of the Mountains that is meant. So beautiful
        is she that a Mulgar who dreams even of one of her Maidens,
        and wakes still in the presence of his dream, can no longer
        be happy in the company of his kind. He hides himself away
        in some old hole or rocky fastness, lightless, matted, and
        uncombed, and so thins and pines, or becomes a Wanderer or
        Môh-mulgar. But it is rare for this to be, for very few
        Mulgars dream beyond the mere forest, as it were; and fewer
        still keep the memories of their dreams when the livelong
        vision of Munza returns to their waking eyes. The Valleys
        of Tishnar lie on either flank of the Mountains of
        Arakkaboa, though she herself wanders only in the stillness
        of the mountain snows. She is shown veiled on the rude pots
        of Assasimmon and in Mulgar scratch-work, with one
        slim-fingered hand clasping her robe of palest purple, her
        head bent a little, as if hearkening to her thoughts; and
        she is shod with sandals of silver. Of these things the
        wandering Oomgar-nuggas, or black men, tell. From Tishnar,
        too, comes the Last Sleep--the sleep of all the World. The
        last sleep just of their own life only is
        Nōōmanossi--darkness, change, and the unreturning. And
        Immanâla is she who preys across these shadows, in this
        valley. So, too, the Mulgars say, "Nōōma, Nōōma,"
        when they mean shadow, as "In the sun paces a leopard's
        Nōōma at her side." Meermut, which means in part also
        shadow, is the shadow, as it were, of lesser light lost in
        Tishnar's radiance, just as moonlight may cast a shadow of
        a pine-tree across a smouldering fire. There is, too, a
        faint wind that breathes in the first twilight and
        starshine of Munza called the Wind of Tishnar. It was, I
        think, the faint murmur of this wind that echoed in the ear
        of Mutta-matutta as she lay dying, for in dying one hears,
        it is said, what in life would carry no more tidings to the
        mind than light brings to the hand. Nod's bells that he
        heard, and thought were his father's, must have been the
        Zevveras' bells of Tishnar's Water-middens, all wandering
        Meermuts. These Water-middens, or Water-maidens, are like
        the beauty of the moonlight. The countless voices of
        fountain, torrent, and cataract are theirs. They, with
        other of Tishnar's Maidens, come riding on their belled
        Zevveras, and a strange silence falls where their little
        invisible horses are tethered; while, perhaps, the Maidens
        sit feasting in a dell, grey with moonbeams and ghostly
        flowers. Even the sullen Mullabruk learns somehow of their
        presence, and turns aside on his fours from the silvery
        mist of their glades and green alleys, just as in the same
        wise a cold air seems to curdle his skin when some haunting
        Nōōma passes by. All the inward shadows of the
        creatures of Munza-mulgar are Nōōmanossi's; all their
        phantoms, spirits, or Meermuts are Tishnar's. And so there
        is a never-ending changeableness and strife in their short
        lives. The leopard (or Roses, as they call her, for the
        beauty of her clear black spots) is Meermut to her cubs,
        Nōōma to the dodging Skeetoes she lies in wait for,
        stretched along a bough. Her beauty is Tishnar's; the
        savagery of her claws is Nōōmanossi's. So Munza's
        children are dark or bright, lovely or estranging,
        according as Meermut or Nōōma prevails in their
        natures. And thus, too, they choose the habitation of their
        bodies. Yet because dark is but day gone, and cruelty
        unkindness, therefore even the heart-shattering
        Nōōmanossi, even Immanâla herself, is only absent
        Tishnar. But there, as everyone can see, I am only
        chattering about what I cannot understand.

One of the first things that Nod remembered was Glint's tumbling from
the great Ukka-tree, which he had climbed at ripening-time, bough up to
bough from the bottom, cracking shells and eating all the way, until,
forgetting how heavy he had become, he swung his fat body on to a
slender and withered branch, and fell all a-topple from top to bottom on
to the back of his thick skull. Beneath this same dark-leaved tree
Seelem buried his servant, together with a pot of subbub, seven loaves
or cakes, and a long stick of Ummuz-cane. But Mutta-matutta after his
death would never touch an Ukka-nut again.

Seelem taught his sons how to make fire, what nuts and roots and fruits
and grasses were wholesome for eating; what herbs and bark and pith for
physic; what reeds and barks for cloth. He taught them how to take honey
without being stung; how to count; how to find their way by the chief
and brightest among the stars; to cut cudgels, to build leaf-huts and
huddles against heat or rain. He taught them, too, the common tongue of
the Forest-monkeys--that is the language of nearly all the Mulgars that
live in the forests of Munza--Jacquet-mulgars, Mullabruks, purple-faced
and saffron-headed Mulgars, Skeetoes, tuft-waving Manquabees,
Fly-catchers and Squirrel-tails, and many more than I can mention.
Seelem taught them also a little of the languages of the dreaded
Gunga-mulgars, of the Collobs, and the Babbabōōmas. But the
Minimul-mulgars' and the Oomgars' or man-monkeys' languages (white,
black, or yellow) he could not teach, because he did not know them.
When, however, they were alone together they spoke the secret language
of the Mulla-mulgars dwelling north of the Arakkaboas--that is,
Mulgar-royal. This language in some ways resembles that of the
Portugalls, in some that of the Oggewibbies, and, here and there--but in
very little--Garniereze. Seelem, of course, taught his sons, and
especially Thumb, many other things besides--more, certainly, than would
contain itself in a little book like this. But, above all, he taught
them to walk upright, never to taste blood, and never, unless in danger
or despair, to climb trees or to grow a tail.

But now, after all these thirteen years of absence from Assasimmon's
palace in the beautiful Valleys of Tishnar, Seelem began to desire more
and more to see again his home and his brother, with whom as a child he
had walked in scarlet and Mamasul, and drunk his syrup from an ivory
cup. He grew more gloomy and morose than ever, squatted alone, his eyes
fixed mournfully in the air. And Mutta would whisper to Nod: "Sst, zun
nizza-neela, tus-weeta zan nuome."

The more cunning of the Forest-mulgars at first had come in troops to
Seelem, laden with gifts of nuts and fruits, because they were afraid of
him. But he would sit in his red jacket and merely stare at them as if
they were no better than flies. And at last they began in revenge to do
him as much mischief as their wits could contrive, until he grew
utterly weary of their scuffling and quarrelling, their thumbs and
colours, fleas and tails. At last he could hear himself no longer, and
one morning, in the first haze of sunrise over the sleeping forest, he
called Mutta and his three sons to where he sat in the shadow of Glint's
great budding Ukka-tree. And he told them he was going on a long
journey--"beyond and beyond, forest and river, forest swamp and river,
the mountains of Arakkaboa, leagues, leagues away"--to seek again the
Valleys of Tishnar. "And I will come back," he said, leaning his hand
upon the ground and blinking at Nod, "with slaves and scarlet and
food-baskets and Zevveras, and bring you all there with me. But first I
must go alone and find the way through dangers thick as flies, O
Mulla-mulgars. Wait here and guard your old mother, Mutta-matutta, my
sons, her Ummuz and ukkas. And grow strong, O tailless ones, till I
return. Zu zoubé seese muglareen, een suang no nouano zupbf!" And that
was all he said.

But Mutta-matutta, though she could not hide her grief at his going,
helped him in every way she could to be quickly gone. He seemed beside
himself, this white, old, crooked Mulla-mulgar. His eyes blazed; he went
muttering; he'd throw up his hands and snuff and snuff, as if the very
wind bore Tishnar on its wings. And even at night he'd rise up in the
darkness and open the door and listen as if out of the immeasurable and
solitudinous forests he heard voices calling him from far away. At
length, in his last shirt (which had been carefully kept these thirteen
years, with a dead kingfisher and a bag of civet, to keep off the
cockroaches); in his finest red jacket and his cap of Mamasul-skin;
with a great bundle of Manaka-cake and Ummuz-cane, knife and
fire-striker and physic, and the old Portingal's rusty musket on his
shoulder, he was ready to be off. In the early morning he came stooping
under the little hut-door. He looked at his hut and his water-spring, at
his bees and canes; he looked at his three sons, and at old
Mutta-matutta, with a great frown, and trembled. And Mutta could not
bear to say good-bye; she lifted her crooked hands above her old head,
the tears running down her cheeks, and she went and hid herself in the
hut till he was gone. But his three sons went a little way with him.

Thumb and Thimble hopped along with his heavy bundle on a stick between
them to the branching of the Mulgar-track, which here runs nearly two
paces wide into the gloom of Munza-mulgar; while Nod sat on Seelem's
shoulder, sucking a stick of Ummuz-cane, and clutching the long, cold,
rusty barrel of his musket. The trees of the forest lifted their
branches in a trembling haze of heat, hung with grey thorny ropes, and
vines and trailing creepers of Cullum and Samarak, vivid with leaves,
and with large cuplike waxen flowers, moon-white, amber, mauve, and
scarlet. Butterflies like blots and splashes of flame, wee Tominiscoes,
ruby and emerald and amethyst, shimmered and spangled and sipped and
hovered. And a thin, twangling, immeasurable murmur like the strings of
Nōōmanossi's harp rose from the tiny millions that made their
nests and mounds and burrows in the forest.

Seelem took his sons one by one by the shoulders, and looked into their
eyes, and touched noses. And they lifted their hands in salutation, and
watched him till he was gone from sight. But though his grey face was
all wizened up with trouble and wet with tears, he never so much as once
looked behind him, lest his sons should cry after him, or he turn back.
So, presently, after they all three lifted their hands once more, as if
his Meermut[2] might still haunt near; and then they went home to their
mother.

    [2] "Meermut" is shadow, phantom, spectre, or even the pictured
        remembrance of anything in the mind.

But the rains came; he did not return. The long days strode softly by,
the chatter and screams of Munza at dawn, the long-drawn, moaning shout
of Mullabruk to Mullabruk as darkness deepened. Nod would sometimes
venture a little way into the forest, hoping to hear the gongs that his
father had told him the close-shorn slaves of Assasimmon tie with
leopard-thongs about their Zevveras' necks. He would sit in the gigantic
shadows of evening, watching the fireflies, and saying to himself: "Sst,
Nod, see what they say--to-morrow!" But the morrow never came that
brought him back his father.

Mutta-matutta cared and cooked for them. She made a great store of
Manaka-cake, packed for coolness all neatly in plantain-leaves;
Nano-cheese, and two or three big pots of Subbub. She kept them clean
and combed; plastered and physicked them; taught them to cook, and many
things else, until, as one by one they grew up, they knew all that she
_could_ teach them, except the wisdom to use what they had learnt. She
would often, too, in the first hush of night, tell them stories of their
father, and of her own father, back even to Zebbah, and the Portingal
dangling with his bunch of wild-cats' tails in the corner.

But as the years wasted away, she grew thin and mournful, and fell ill
of pining and grief and age, and even had at last to keep to her bed of
moss and cotton in the hut.

Her sons worked hard for her, pushing into the forest and across the
narrow swamp in search of fruits to tempt her appetite. Nod heaped up
fresh leaves for her bed, and sang in his shrill, quavering voice every
evening Tishnar's hymn to his poor old mother. He baked her sweet
potatoes and Nanoes wrapped in leaves, and would dance round, "wriggle
and stamp--wriggle and stamp," as Seelem had told him dance the
Oomgar-nuggas, to try to make her cheerful. But by-and-by she began to
languish, her teeth chattering, her eyes burning, unable to eat.... And
one still afternoon, when only Nod was near (his brothers, tired of the
heat and buzzing in the green hut, having gone to gather nuts and sticks
in the forest), as Mutta-matutta sat dozing and muttering in her corner,
came the voice of Tishnar, calling in the hush of evening: and she knew
she must die.

Nod crept close to her, thinking at first the strange voice singing
was the sound of Seelem's Zevveras' distant gongs, and he held the
hard thin hand between his. When Thumb and Thimble returned with their
bags and faggots of smoulder-wood, she called them all three, and told
them she too must go away now, perhaps even, if only in Meermut, to
find their father. And she besought them to be always true and faithful
one to another, and to be brave. "Five fingers serve one hand, my good
men," she said. "And oh, remember this always: that you are all three
Mulla-mulgars, sons of Seelem, whose home is far from here--Mulla-mulgars
who never do walk flambo--that is, on all fours--never taste blood, and
never, unless in danger and despair, climb trees or grow a tail."

It was hot and gloomy in the tangled little hut, lit only by the violet
of the dying afterglow. And when she had rested a little while to
recover her breath, she told them that Seelem, the night before he left
them, had said that, should he perish on his journey and not return, in
seven Munza years they were, as best they could, bravely to follow after
him. In time they would perhaps reach the Valleys of Tishnar, and their
uncle, Prince Assasimmon, would welcome them.

"His country lies beyond and beyond," she said, "forest and river,
forest, swamp and river, the Mountains of Arakkaboa--leagues, leagues
away."

And, as she paused, a feeble wind sighed through the open window,
stirring the dangling bones of the Portingal, so that, with their faint
clicking, they too, seemed to echo, "leagues, leagues away."

"It will be a long and dreary journey, my sons. But the Prince
Assasimmon, Mulla-mulla of the Mulgars, is great and powerful, and has
for hut a palace of ivory and Azmamogreel, with scarlet and Mamasul,
slaves and peacocks, and beasts uncountable; and leagues of Ukka and
Barbary-nuts; and boundless fields of Ummuz, and orchards of fruit, and
bowers of flowers and pleasure. And his, too, is the Rose of all the
Mulgars." And as he listened Thimble shuffled from foot to foot, his
heart uneasy, to hear her cry so hollowly the beauty of that Rose. And
at her bidding, out of the cupboard they took the civeted bundles of all
the stuff and little Mulgar treasures she had been hoarding up all
these years for them against this last day.

She gave Thumb and Thimble each a red Oomgar's jacket with curved metal
hooks, and to Nod the little coat of mountain-sheep's wool, with its
nine ivory buttons. She divided and shared everything between
them--their father's knives and cudgels, the beads blue and emerald, the
Margarita stones. The Portingal's rusty hatchet, burned with a cross on
its stock, she gave to Thumb; a little fat black greasy book of sorcery,
made of Exxswixxia leaves, to Thimble; and to Nod, last of all, picking
it out of the stitched serpent-skin lining of her great wool cap, she
gave the Wonderstone.

"I give this to Nod," she said to his brothers, "because he is a
Nizza-neela, and has magic in him. Come close, my sons, Thumb and
Thimble, and see. His winking [or left][3] eye has green within the
hazel; his thumbs grow lean and long; he still keeps two milk-teeth; and
bears the Nizza-neela tuft betwixt his ears." With her hot skinny
fingers she stroked softly back his hair, and showed his brothers the
little velvety patch, or tuft, or badge, or crest, on the top of his
head, above the parting. "O Mulla-mulgars, how I begged your father to
take this Wonderstone with him on his journey! but he would not. He
said, 'Keep it, and let my sons, if need be, carry it after me to the
kingdom of my brother. He will know by this one thing that they are
indeed my sons, Mulla-mulgars, Princes of Tishnar, sibbetha eena manga
Môh!'"

    [3] On the right or cudgel side, the Mulgars say, sits Bravery;
        on the winking, woman, or left side, Craft.

"Never, little Nod," said his old dying mother--"never lose, nor give
away, nor sport with, nor even lend this Wonderstone; and if in your
long journey you are in danger of the Third Sleep,[4] or lost, or in
great fear, spit with your spittle on the stone, and rub softly three
times with your left thumb, Samaweeza: Tishnar will hear you; help will
come."

    [4] First Sleep is night-sleep; Second Sleep is swoon-sleep;
        Third Sleep is death, or Nōōmanossi. So, too, the
        Mulgars say, the first is "Little-go," the second is
        "Great-go," and the third is "Come-no-more"; as if their
        bodies were a lodging, and sleep a kind of out-of-doors.

Then, with her small, clumsy fingers, she tied up the sleeping
milk-white Wonderstone in the hem of his woolly sheep's coat, and lay
back in her bed, too feeble to speak again. Thumb, Thimble, and Nod sat
all three, each with his little heap of house-stuff before him, which it
seemed hateful now to have, staring through the doorway. In the purple
gloom the fireflies were mazily flickering. Night was still, like a
simmering pot, with heat. And out of the swamp they heard the Ooboë
calling to its mate, singing marvellous sweet and clear in the darkness
above its woven nest; while over their heads the tiny Nikka-nakkas, or
mouse-owls, sat purring in the thatch. And Nod said: "Listen, Mutta,
listen; how the Ooboë's telling secrets!" And she smiled with tight-shut
lids, wagging her wizened head.

And in the deepest dead of night, when Thimble sat sleeping, his long
arms thrown out over the Portingal's rough table, and Thumb crouching at
the door, Nod heard in the silence a very faint sigh. He crept to his
mother's bed. She softly raised her hand to him, and her eyes closed.

So her three sons dug her a deep grave beside Glint's, under the
Ukka-tree, as she had bidden them. And many of the Forest-mulgars,
specially those of her own kind and kindred, came down solemnly out of
the forest towards evening of that day, and keened or droned for
Mutta-matutta, squatting together at some little distance from the
Portingal's hut. Beyond their counting (though that is not a hard
matter) was the number of the years she and her father and her father's
father, back even to Zebbah, had lived in the hut. But they did not come
near, because they feared the Portingal's yellow bones hung up in the
corner.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]


CHAPTER II


At first the three brothers lived so forlorn and solitary together they
could scarcely eat. Everything they saw or handled told them only over
and over again that their mother was dead. But there was work to be
done, and brave hearts must take courage, else sorrow and trouble would
be nothing but evil. This, too, was no time for sitting idle and
doleful. For a little before the gathering of the rains there began to
seem a strangeness in the air. After the great heat had flown up a
tempest of wind and lightning of such a brightness that Nod, peering out
of his little tangled window-hole, could see beneath the gleaming rods
of rain and the huge, bowed, groaning trees no less than three leopards
crouching for shelter beneath the Portingal's sturdy little hut. He
could hear them, too, in the pauses of the tempest, mewling, spitting,
and swearing, and the lash of their angry tails against the wall of the
hut. After the tempest, it fell cold and very still, with sometimes a
moaning in the air. Strange weather was in the sky at rise and set of
sun. And the three brothers, looking out, and seeing the numberless
flights of birds winging with cries all in one direction, and hearing
this moaning, hardly knew what to be doing. They went out every day to
gather great bundles of wood and as many nuts and fruits and roots as
they could carry. And they found everywhere wise creatures doing the
same--I mean, of course, collecting food--for none beside the Minimuls,
the Gungas, and the Mulla-mulgars have fire-sticks, and most of them
fear even the sight and smell of flames.

And Nod, having his mother's quick hand, made a great store of
Manaka-cake and Sudd-bread. He dried some fruits, pulped others. And
some he poured with honey or Ummuz-juice into the Portingal's little
earthen pots, many of which were still unbroken, while he who had first
used them was but a bony shadow-trap in the corner. And Nod and Thumb
made two great gourds of Subbub, very sweet and potent, so that, because
of the sweet smell of it, the four-clawed Weddervols came barking about
their hut all night. But the Manga-cheese their mother had made melted
in the heat of the great fires they burned, and most of it ran down out
of the cupboard. They filled the wood-hole with firewood, and stacked it
outside, above Nod's shoulder, all against the hut.

And it was about the nineteenth week after Mutta's death that Thumb, as
he came stooping to the door one night, saw fires of Tishnar on the
ground. Over the swamp stood a shaving of moon, clear as a bow of
silver. And all about, on every twig, on every thorn, and leaf, and
pebble; all along the nine-foot grasses, on every cushion and touch of
bark, even on the walls of their hut, lay this spangling fiery meal of
Tishnar--frost. He called his brothers. Their breath stood round them
like smoke. They stared and snuffed, they coughed in the cold air.
Never, since birds wore feathers--never had hoar-frost glittered on
Munza-mulgar before.

These Mullas danced; they crouched down in the dreadful cold, thinking
to warm their hands at these uncountable fires. And, lo and behold! in a
little while, looking at one another, each was a Mulgar, white and
sparkling too. Their very hairs, down-arm and up-arm, every tuft stood
stiff and white with frost. Like millers they stood, all blazing in the
night.

And that was the beginning of Witzaweelwūlla (the White Winter). For it
was only three days after Tishnar's fires were kindled that Nod first
saw snow. Now one, two, three, a scatter of flakes, just a few.
"Feathers," thought Nod.

But faster, faster; twirling, rustling, hovering. "Butterflies," thought
Nod.

And then it seemed the sky, the air, was all aflock. He ran out snuffing
and frightened. He clapped his hands; he leapt and frisked and shouted.
And there, coming up out of the swamp, were his brothers, laden with
rushes, and as woolly with snow as sheep. Because it looked so white and
crisp and beautiful Nod even brought out a pot and filled it with snow
to cook for their supper. But there, when he lifted the lid, was only a
little steaming water.

By-and-by they began to wonder and to fear no more. How glad they were
of all the wood they had brought in, and of their great cupboardful of
victuals! They made themselves long poles, and would go leaping about to
keep themselves warm. They built such roaring fires on the hearth they
squatted round that the sparks flew up like fireflies under the black,
starry sky. Snug in their hut, the brothers would sit of an evening on
their three stools, with their smoking bowls between their legs. And
they would open their great mouths and drone and sing the songs their
father had taught them, beating to the notes with their flat feet on the
earth floor. But, nevertheless, they pined for the cold and the snow to
be over and gone, so that they might start on their journey! Every
morning broke bleak and sparkling. Often of a night new snow came, till
they walked between low white walls on their little path to the forest.
But in spite of the cold which made them ache and shiver, and their toes
and fingers burn and itch, they went out searching for frozen nuts and
fruits every morning, and still fetched in faggots.

Often while they squatted, toasting themselves round their fire, Nod
would look up, blinking his eyes, to see the faces of the Forest-mulgars
peeping in at the window, envying the Mullas their warmth, though afraid
of their fire, and calling softly one to another: "Ho, ho! look at the
Mulla-sluggas [lazy princes] sitting round their fire!" And Thumb and
Thimble would grin and softly scratch their hairy knees. Thumb, indeed,
made up a Mulgar drone, which he used to buzz to himself when the
Munza-mulgars came miching and mocking and peeping. (But it was a bad
and dull drone, and I will not make it worse by turning it into my poor
English from Mulgar-royal.)

Nod often sat watching the Forest-mulgars frisking in the forest, though
every morning the light shone through on many perched frozen in the
boughs. The Mullabruks and Manquabees made huddles in the snow. But the
tiny Squirrel-tails, with their dark, grave, beautiful eyes and silken
amber coats, still roosted high where the frost-wind stirred in the
dark. Sometimes on a crusted branch of snow Nod would see
five--seven--nine of these tiny, frost-powdered Mulgars cuddling
together in a row, poor little frozen and empty boxes, their gay lives
fled away. And when his brothers were gathering sticks in the forest, he
would smuggle out for them two or three handfuls of nuts and pieces of
cake and Sudd-bread. All the crusts and husks and morsels he kept in a
shallow grass-basket, which his mother had plaited, to feed these
pillowy Squirrel-tails, the lean Skeetoes, and the spindle-legged
flycatchers.

Birds of all colours and many other odd little beasts came in the snow
to Nod to be fed. He summoned them with the clapping of two sticks of
ivory together, till his brothers began to wonder how it was their
victuals were dwindling so fast. But once, when Thumb and Thimble were
away in the forest with their jumping-poles, and he had ventured out on
this errand with his basket full of scraps, he forgot to put up the door
behind him. When he returned, skipping as fast as his fours would carry
him, wild pigs and long-snouted Brackanolls, Weddervols, and hungry
birds had come in and eaten more than half their store. The last of
their mother's treasured cheese was gone, and all their Ummuz-cane. That
night Thumb and Thimble went very sulky to bed. And for the next few
days all three brothers sallied out together, with their poles,
searching and grubbing after every scrap of victuals they could find
with which to fill their larder again.

Some time after this, so hard and sharp grew the cold that Thumb and
Thimble were minded to put on their red metal-hooked jackets when they
went out stick-gathering. They took their knives and nut-sacks over
their shoulders, and muffled and bunched themselves up close, with
cotton-leaves wound round their stomachs, and their skin caps pulled low
over their round frost-enticing ears. And they told Nod to cook them a
smoking hot supper against the dark, for now the snow was so deep it was
a hard matter to find and carry sticks, and they meant to look for more
before matters worsened yet. So Nod at once set to his cookery.

He made up a great fire on the hearthstone. But in spite of its flames,
so louring with gathering snow-clouds was the day that he had to keep
the door down to give him clearer light; and, though he kept scuttling
about, driving out the thieving Brackanolls and Peekodillies that came
nosing into the hut, and scaring away the famished birds that kept
hopping in through the window-hole, even then he could not keep himself
warm. So at last he went to the lower cupboard, under the dangling
Portingal, and took out his sheepskin coat. He put away the dried
kingfisher which his mother had wrapped in the fleece to keep it sweet,
and buttoned the ivory buttons, and skipped about nimbly over his
cooking in that. Then he heaped more wood on--logs and brush and
smoulder-wood--higher and higher, till the flames leapt red, gold, and
lichen-green out of the chimney-hole. Then he said to himself, flinging
yet another armful on: "Now Nod will go down and get some ice to melt
for water to make Sudd-bread." So he went down to the water-spring.

And he stood watching the Mulgars frisking at the edge of the forest,
vain that they should see him with his pole and basket, standing in his
sheep's jacket. He broke up some ice and put in into his basket. Then he
plodded over to his mother's grave and cleared away the hardened snow
that had fallen during the night on her little heap of stones. "Kara,
kara Mutta, Mutta-matutta," he whispered, laying his bony cheek on the
stones--"dearest Mutta!" And while he stood there thinking of his
mother, and of how he would go and bring down a pot of honeycomb for her
death-shadow; and then of his father; and then of the strange journey
they were all going to set out on when Tishnar returned to her
mountains; and then of his Wonderstone; and then of Assasimmon, Prince
of the Valleys, his peacocks and Ummuz-cane, and Ummuz-cane, and
Ummuz-cane--while he was thus softly thinking of all these happy things,
he suddenly saw the gigantic Ukka-tree above him, lit up marvellously
red, and glowing as if with the setting of the sun. He shut his eyes
with dread, for he saw all the forest monkeys lit up too, stock-still,
staring, staring; and he heard a curious crackle and whs-s-s-ss.

Nod turned his little head and looked back over his shoulder. And
against the snowy gloom of the forest he saw not only sparks, but
flames, wagging up out of the chimney-hole. The door of the hut was like
the frame of a furnace. And a trembling fear came over him, so that for
a moment he could neither breathe nor move. Then, throwing down his
basket of ice, and calling softly, "Mutta, O Mutta!" he scrambled over
the snow as fast as he could and rushed into the hut. But he was too
late; before he could jump, spluttering and choking, out of the door
again, with just an armful of anything he could see, its walls were
ablaze. Dry and tangled, its roof burnt like straw--a huge red fire
pouring out smoke and flame, hissing, gushing, crackling, bubbling,
roaring. And presently after, while Nod ran snapping his fingers,
dancing with horror in the snow, and calling shriller and shriller,

    "Thumb, Thimble; Thimble, Thumb,
     Leave your sticks and hurry home:
     Thicker and thicker the smoke do come!
     Thumb, Thimble; Thimble, Thumb!"

he heard above the flames a multitudinous howling and squealing, and he
looked over his shoulder, and saw hundreds upon hundreds of faces in the
forest staring out between the branches at the fire. By the time that
Thimble and Thumb in their red jackets were scampering on all fours,
helter-skelter, downhill out of the forest, a numberless horde of the
Forest-mulgars were frisking and howling round the blaze, and the flames
were floating half as high as Glint's great Ukka-tree. They squealed,
"Walla, walla!" (water), grinning and gibbering one to another as they
came tumbling along; but they might just as well have called
"Moonshine!" for every drop was frozen. Nor would twenty flowing springs
and all Assasimmon's slaves have quenched that fire now. And when the
Forest-mulgars saw that the Mulla-mulgars had given up hope of putting
the fire out, they pelted it with snowballs, and scampered about,
gathering up every stick and straw and shred they could find, and did
their utmost to keep it in. For at last, in their joy that the little
Portingal's bones were in the burning, and in their envy of the
Mulla-mulgars, their fear of fire was gone.

And so Night came down, and there they all were, hand-in-hand in a huge
monkey-ring, dancing and prancing round the little Portingal's burning
hut, and squealing at the top of their voices; while countless beasts of
Munza-mulgar, too frightened of fire to draw near, prowled, with
flame-emblazoned eyes, staring out of the forest. And this was the
Forest-mulgars' dancing-song:

    "Bhoor juggub duppa singlee--duppa singlee--duppa singlee;
                    Bhoor juggub duppa singlee;
                   Sal rosen ghar Bhōōsh!"

They sing at first in a kind of droning zap-zap, and through their
noses, these Munza-mulgar, their yelps gradually gathering in speed and
volume, till they lift their spellbound faces in the air and howl aloud.
And with such a resounding shout and clamour on the Bhōōsh you
would think they were in pain.

For the best part of that night the fire flared and smouldered, while
the stars wheeled in the black sky above the forest; and still round and
round the Mulgars jigged and danced in the glistening snow. For the
frost was so hard and still, not even this great fire could melt it
fifteen paces distant from its flames. And Thimble and Thumb in their
red jackets, and Nod in his cotton breeches and sheepskin coat, shivered
and shook, because they weren't hardened, like the Forest-mulgars, to
the icy night-wind that stole fitfully abroad.

When morning broke, the fire had burned down to a smother, and most of
the dancing Mulgars had trooped back, tired out and sleepy, to their
tree-houses and huddles and caverns and hanging ropes in the forest. But
no sleep stole over those Mulla-sluggas, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod,
sitting on their stones in the snow, watching their home-smoke drooping
down and down. Nod stared and stared at the embers, his teeth
chattering, ashamed and nearly heart-broken. But his brothers looked now
at the smoke, and now at him, and whenever they looked at Nod they
muttered, "Foh! Mulla-jugguba, foh!"--that is to say, "Foh!
Royal-Flame-Shining One!" or "Your Highness Firebright!" or "What think
you now, Prince of Bonfires?" But they were too sullen and angry, and
Nod was too downcast, even to get up to drive away the little
mole-skinned Brackanolls and the Peekodillies which came nosing and
grunting and scratching in the ashes, in search of the scorched oil-nuts
and the charred Sudd and Manaka-cake.

The three Mulla-mulgars sat there until the sun began to be bright on
their faces and to make a splendour of the snow; then they did not feel
quite so cold and miserable. And when they had nibbled a few nuts and
berries which a friendly old Manquabee brought down to them, they began
to think and talk over what they had best be doing now--at least, Nod
listened, while Thumb and Thimble talked. And at length they decided
that, their hut being burnt, and they without refuge from the cold, or
any hoard of food, they would wait no longer, but set off at once into
the forest on the same long journey as their father Seelem had gone, to
seek out their Uncle Assasimmon, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar.

This once said, Thumb lifted his fat body stiffly from his stone, and
took his jumping-pole, and frisked high, leaping to and fro to make
himself warm again. Soon he began to tingle, and laughed out to cheer
the others when he tumbled head over heels into a snowdrift. And they
combed themselves, and stood up to their trouble, and thought
stubbornly, as far as their monkey-wits would let them, only of the
future (which is easier to manage than the past). Then they searched
close in the cooling ashes and embers of the hut, and found a few beads
undimmed by the heat, and all the Margarita stones, which, like the
Salamander, no flame can change; also, one or two unbroken pots and jars
and an old stone kettle or Ghôb. Nod, indeed, found also a piece of gold
that had lain hid in the Portingal's rags. But all the little
Traveller's bones except his left thumb knuckle-bone were fallen to
ashes. Nod gave Thumb the noddle of gold, and himself kept the
knuckle-bone. "Sōōtli,"[5] he whispered, touched his nose with it,
and put it secretly into his pocket. And glad were they to think that
only that morning they had fetched out their red jackets and Nod his
wool coat.

    [5] That is, Magic, or Strangeness. When the Mulgars of Munza
        see anything strange or unknown, they will whimper to one
        another, as they stand with eyes fixed, "Sōōtli,
        Sōōtli, Sōōtli," or some such sound.

When the Forest-mulgars heard that the three brothers were setting out
on their long journey, they came trooping down from their leafy
villages, carrying presents, two skin water-bags (for the longed-for
time when the ice should bestir itself), a rough stone knife, a wild-bee
honeycomb, a plaited bag of dried Nanoes and nuts, and so on. But of
these Mulgar tribes few, like ants, or bees, or squirrels, make any
store, and none uses fire, nor, save one or two solitaries here and
there, can any walk upright or carry a cudgel. They munch and frisk and
chatter, and scratch and quarrel and mock, having their own ways and
wisdom and their own musts and mustn'ts. There are few, too, that
cherish not some kindness, if not for all, at least for one another--the
leopard to her cubs, the Coccadrillo to her eggs. But back to our
Mulla-mulgars.

The forest of Munza-mulgar saw a feast upon its borders that day. The
Forest-mulgars sat in a great ring, and ate and drank, and when the sun
had ascended into the middle of the sky and the snow-piled branches
shone white as Tishnar's lambs, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod, rose up and
sang, "Gar Mulgar Dusangee"--the Mulgars' Farewell. While they sang, all
the Forest-mulgars, in their companies and tribes, sat solemnly around
them, furred and coloured and pouched and tailed. Shave their chops and
put them in breeches, they might well be little men. And they waved
slowly palm-branches and greenery to the time of the tune; some even
moaned and grunted, too.

    "Far away in Nanga-noon
     Lived an old and grey Baboon,[6]
       Ah-mi, Sulâni!
     Once a Prince among his kind,
     Now forsaken, left behind,
     Feeble, lonely, all but blind:
       Sulâni, ghar magleer.

    "Peaceful Tishnar came by night,
     In the moonbeams cold and white;
       Ah-mi, Sulâni!
     'Far away from Nanga-noon,
     Thou old and grey Baboon;
     Is a journey for thee soon!'
       Sulâni, ghar magleer.

    "'Be not frightened, shut thine eye;
     Comfort take, nor weep, nor sigh;
     Solitary Tishnar's nigh!'
       Sulâni, ghar magleer.

    "Old Baboon, he gravely did
     All that peaceful Tishnar bid;
       Ah-mi, Sulâni!
     In the darkness cold and grim
     Drew his blanket over him;
     Closed his old eyes, sad and dim:
       Sulâni, ghar magleer."

    [6] So I have translated "Babbabooma."

And here the Mulgars all lay flat, with their faces in the snow, and put
the palms of their hands on their heads; while the three Mulla-mulgars
paced slowly round, singing the last verse, which, after the doggerel I
have made of the others, I despair of putting into English:

    "Talaheeti sul magloon
     Olgar, ulgar Nanga-noon;
       Ah-mi, Sulâni!
     Tishnar sōōtli maltmahee,
     Ganganareez soongalee,
     Manni Mulgar sang suwhee:
       Sulâni, ghar magleer."

Then the Mulla-mulgars cut down stout boughs to make cudgels, and,
having tied up their few possessions into three bundles and filled their
pockets with old nuts, they took palm-leaves and honey-comb and withered
scarlet and green berries, with which they canopied as best they could
their mother's grave, nor forgot poor gluttonous Glint's. They stood
there in the snow, and raised their hands in lamentable salutation. And
each took up a stone and jerked it (for they cannot throw as men do) as
far as he could towards the forest, as if to say, "Go with us!" Then,
with one last sorrowful look at the befrosted ashes of their hut, they
took up their bundles and started on their journey.

At first, as I have said, the Mulgar-track is wide, and even in this
continually falling snow was beaten clear by hundreds of hand and foot
prints. But after a while the lofty branches began to knit themselves
above, and to hang thickly over the travellers, and to shut out the
light. And the path grew faint and narrow.

One by one their friends waved good-bye and left them, until only Noll
and Nunga (Mutta-matutta's only sister's only children) accompanied
them. Just before sunset, when the forest seemed like a cage of music
with the voices of the birds that now sang, many of them desperately
from cold and hunger rather than for delight, Noll, too, and Nunga
raised their hands, touched noses, and said good-bye. And the three
brothers stood watching them till they had waved their branches for the
last time. Then they went on.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER III


It was now, what with the snow and what with natural evening, growing
quickly dark. The birds had ceased to sing; only the Munza night-jar
rattled. Now near, now far away, the Mulla-mulgars heard the beasts of
the forest beginning to range and roar in the gloom. Nod buttoned up his
sheep's jacket, for there was a frost-mist beneath the trees. He was
cold, and began to be tired and very homesick. But Thumb was broad and
fat and prodigiously strong, Thimble lean and sinewy. And when Thumb saw
that Nod went stumbling under his bundle, he said: "Give it to me,
Mulla-jugguba!" (Prince of Bonfires). And Thimble laughed.

But Nod refused to give up his bundle, and trudged on behind his
brothers, until night came down in earnest. Then, when it was quite
dark, after listening and muttering together, they thought that if they
spent the night down here they would certainly sleep "in danger." So
Thumb clambered into a great Ollaconda-tree, and let down a rope or
twist of the thick creeper called Cullum, and drew up all three bundles.
Then Thimble pushed and Thumb pulled, and up went Nod, too stiff and
cold to climb up by himself, after the bundles, sheep's-jacket and all.
Then Thimble climbed up too. They made their supper of Mulgar-bread and
frost-cockled Mambel-berries, which are sour and quench the thirst, and
drank or sucked splinters of ice, plenty of which hung glassy in the
great, still, winter-troubled tree. And for fear of leopards (or
"Roses," as their Munza name signifies), they agreed to keep watch in
turn, Thumb first, then Thimble, then Nod. They tied their bundles to
the boughs, chose smooth forks to squat in, and soon Thimble was fast
asleep.

But when Nod found himself alone in the midst of the great icy tree in
the black forest, he could not sleep for thinking of it. He stroked his
face with his brown hand over and over to keep his eyes shut. He nuzzled
down into his sheep's-jacket. He counted his fingers again and again. He
repeated the lingo of the Seventy-seven Travellers from beginning to
end. It was in vain. Far and near he heard the cries and wanderings of
the forest beasts; the Ollaconda-tree was full of the nests of the
weaver-birds; and, worse still, soon Thimble began to snore so loud and
so sorrowfully that poor Nod trembled where he sat. He could bear
himself no longer. He stooped forward and called softly: "Thumb, my
brother, are you awake, Thumb?"

"Sleep on, little Ummanodda," said Thumb; "if I watch, I watch."

"But I cannot sleep," said Nod; "these weavers chatter so."

Thumb laughed. "Thimble sings in his dreams," he said. "Why shouldn't
the little tailors sing, too?"

"Do you think any leopards will come?" said Nod.

"Think good things, my brother, not bad," Thumb answered. "But this we
will do--wait a little while awake, and I will sleep, and as soon as
sleep begins to come, call me and wake me; then, little brother, you
shall sleep in peace till morning."

He put his head under his arm without waiting for an answer; and soon,
even louder and more dismal than Thimble's, rose Thumb's snoring into
the Ollaconda-tree.

Nod sat cold and stiff, his eyes stretched open, his ears twitching. And
a thin moonlight began to tremble between the leaves. The light cheered
his spirits, and he thought, "Nod will soon feel sleepy now," when
suddenly out of the gloom of the forest burst a sounder or drove of wild
pig, scuffling and chuggling beneath the tree. Peeping down, Nod could
just see them in the faint moonshine, with their long, black, hairy ears
and tufted tails.

And presently, while they were grubbing in the snow, one lifted up its
snout and cried in a loud voice: "Co-older--and colder!"

"Co-older--and colder," cried another.

"Co-older--and colder," cried a third. And all silently grubbed on as
before.

"The Queen of the Mountains is in the Forest," began the first again,
"with fingers of frost."

"And shoulders of snow."

    [Illustration: "THE QUEEN OF THE MOUNTAINS IS IN THE FOREST ... WITH
    FINGERS OF FROST."]

"And feet of ice," screamed the third.

"The Queen of the Mountains," they grunted all together; and went on
burrowing, and shouldering, and faintly squeaking.

"Hungrier and hungrier," cried one in a shrill voice, suddenly lifting
its head, so that Nod could see quite clearly its pale green, greedy
slits of eyes.

"Leaner and leaner," answered another.

"All the Sudd hid, all the Ukkas gone, all the Bōōbab frozen!"
squealed a third.

"The Queen of the Mountains is in the Forest," they grunted all
together. But the pig that had looked up into the tree was still
staring--staring and wrinkling his narrow snout, till at last all the
pigs stopped feeding. "Pigs, my brothers; pigs, my brothers," he
muttered. "Up in this tree are Mulgar three, which travellers be.... Ho,
there!" But Nod thought it best to make no answer. And the pig turned
round and beat with his hind-feet against the bole or trunk of the
Ollaconda. "Ho, there, little Mulgar in the sheep-skin coat!"

"If you beat like that, horny-foot, you'll wake my brothers," said Nod.

"Brothers!" said the pig angrily. "What's brothers to Ukka-nuts? What's
your names, and where are you going?"

"My brothers' names," said Nod, "are Thumma and Thimbulla, and I am Nod.
We are going to the palace of ivory and Azmamogreel that is our Uncle
Assasimmon's, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar." At that all the pigs
began muttering together.

"Come down and tell us!" said a lean yellow pig; and as he snapped his
jaws Nod saw in the moonbeam the frost-light blinking on his bristles.

"Tell you what?" said Nod.

"About this Prince of Tishnar. Oh, these false-tongued Mulgars!" Nod
made no answer.

Then a fat old she-pig began speaking in a soft, pleasant voice. "You
must be very, very rich, Prince Nod, with those great bags of nuts; and,
surely, it must be royal Sudd I smell! And Assasimmon his uncle! whose
house is more than a thousand pigs'-tails long; and gardens so thick
with trees of fruit and honey, one groans to have only one stomach. Come
down a little way, Prince Nod, and tell us poor hungry pigs of the royal
Assasimmon and the dainty food he eats."

So pleasant was her flattering voice Nod thought there could not
possibly be any harm in scrambling down just one or two branches. And
though his fingers were still stiff with cold, he began to edge down.

"Oh, but bring a bundle--bring a bundle, little Prince. It's cold for
gentlefolk sitting in the snow."

"Pigs--pigs must naked go; but not for gentlefolk the snow," squealed
the herd shrilly.

"Come gently, Prince Nod; do not stir your royal brothers, Prince Nod!"
said the old crafty one.

Nod listened to her flattery, and, having untied his precious bundle, he
slid down with it softly to the ground.

"A seat--a seat for Prince Nod," cried the old sow. "Oh, what a royal
jacket--oh, what a handsome jacket!" So Nod sat down on his bundle in
the moonlight of the snow, and all the wild pig, scenting his Sudd,
pressed close--forty wild pig at least.

"Assasimmon, Assasimmon, Prince of Tishnar, Prince of Tishnar," they
kept grunting, and at every word they squeezed and edged closer and
closer, their hungry snouts in air--closer and closer, till Nod had to
hold tight to keep his seat; closer and closer, and again they began
squealing: "Pigs are hungry, brother Nod. Cakes of Sudd, cakes of
_Sudd_!" And then, like a great scrambling wave of pigs, they rushed at
him all together. Over went Nod into the snow. Scores of little sharp
hoofs scuttled over him. And when at last he was able to get up and look
about him, bruised and scratched and breathless, no trace of pigs was
there, no trace of bundle; every nut and crust of Sudd and crumb of
pulpy Mulgar-bread was gone. And suddenly came a loud, harsh voice out
of the tree. "Ho, ho, and ahôh! What's the trouble? what's the trouble?"
Nod looked up, and saw Thumb and Thimble staring down between their
out-stretched arms through the moon-silvery leaves. And he told them,
trembling, of how he could not sleep, and about the pigs and the bundle.

"O most wise Nizza-neela!" said Thumb when he had finished. "Last night
Mulla-jugguba; this night Nodda-nellipogo" (Prince of Bonfires, Noddle
of Pork). But Thimble was too sore to say anything, for his little
Exxswixxia-book of sorcery had been stuffed into Nod's bundle, and now
it was lost for ever. And they left Nod to climb up again by himself.
Once safely back on his fork, he was so tired and miserable that, with
his hands over his face, he fell almost directly fast asleep.

When he opened his small clear eyes again, sunrise was glinting here and
there through the green twilight on the icicles and snow in the trees.
He looked down, and saw Thumb and Thimble combing themselves. So down he
went, too, and took off his jacket, and skipped and frisked till he grew
warm. Then he, too, combed himself, and went and sat down beside his
brothers at the foot of the Ollaconda-tree to eat his morning's share of
musty nuts. At first his brothers sat angry and sullen, munching with
their great dog-teeth, and seeming to begrudge him every Ukka-nut he
cracked. But as the daybeams brightened, here where the trees grew not
so dense, and the birds, some wellnigh as small as acorns, flashed and
zigzagged, and Parrakeetoes squeaked and screamed in hundreds on the
branches, watching the three hungry travellers, they began to forget
Nod's supper with the pigs. And when they had eaten, into the gloom of
Munza they set out once more.

As a dog smells out the footsteps of his master so these Mulla-mulgars
seemed to smell out their way. No path was to be seen except where
pig-droves had rambled by, or droves of Mullabruks and packs of
Munza-dogs. And once Thumb, on a sudden, stood still, and pointed to the
ground, opening his great grinning mouth, with its little wall of
glistening teeth, and muttered, "Roses!" They stood together looking
down at the frozen footprints of a mother-leopard and her cubs in the
fresh-laid snow. Nod fancied, even, he could smell her breath on the icy
air. After this they went forward more warily, but carried their cudgels
with a bravery, looking very fierce in their red jackets and great caps
of furry skins. And, after a while, the huge trees gathered in again,
and soon arched loftily overhead as thick as thatch, so that it was all
in a cold and sluggish gloom they walked, like the dusk of coming
night. Nor, so thick was the leafy roof overhead, had any snow floated
into its twilight. Only a rare frost shimmered on the spiky husks of
fruit thrown down by the Tree-mulgars. Huge frozen ropes of Cullum and
wild Pepper dangled in knots and loops from bough to bough, and
sometimes a troop of Squirrel-tails or spidery Skeetoes swung lightly
down these hoar-frost ropes, chattering and scolding at the three
strangers. But though Thumb called to them in their own tongue.
"Ullalullaubbajub," or some such sounds as that, meaning, "We are
friends," they skipped off, hand, foot, and tail, into their leafy roofs
and shadows, afraid of these cudgel-carrying travellers in their red
jackets, who walked, like the dreaded Oomgar, heads in air.

Yet Nod was glad even of such company as this, so silent was the forest.
In this darkness they sat and ate their handful of food, with scorpions
and speckled tree-spiders watching them from their holes, not knowing
where the sun was, nor daring to kindle a fire with their fire-sticks
for fear of the tree-shadows. And at night they slept huddled close
together for warmth and safety, while Thumb and Thimble kept watch in
turn.

In this way many days passed almost without blink of sunlight. Once and
again they would sidle over some pig-track, or stand, with club in hand,
to watch a leopard pass. And often troops of Mulgars kept pace with them
awhile, swinging from branch to branch, and chattering threats at the
travellers. But most of the forest creatures, parched and famished by
such a cold as had never fallen on Munza-mulgar before, had been driven
down out of the forest in search of food and warmth. And often the
travellers were compelled to search the bark of the trees and in the
crevices of rocks and under stones, as do the Babbaboomas, and eat
whatever creeping things they could find. Beside the dangling Skeetoes,
and now and then father, mother, and chidderkins of some old sour-faced
mournful Mullabruk, they saw few things living, except the little
ivory-gnawing M'boko, Peekodillies, and poison-spiders. But many of
these, too, had died of cold and hunger. And now, instead of the pale
green and amber lamps of firefly and glowworm, burned only the fires of
Tishnar's frost. Birds rarely ventured down into this snowy shadowland,
except only the tiny Telateuties, blood-red as ladybirds, that ran
chittering up the trees. These birds haunt only where daylight rarely
steals, and it is said they talk with the tree-spirits, or giant
Nōōmas, that roam these shades.

At last, their feet sore with poison-needles, which sometimes pierced
clean through their thick skins, their eyes aching with the darkness,
the three travellers, on the eighth day, broke out of the dense forest
into broad daylight and shining snow again. Down and down they descended
into a frozen swampy valley. And about noon, half hidden in the fume and
steam of their own breath, they saw a great herd or muster of
Ephelantoes feeding. They stood in a line beyond Nod's counting--big,
middling-sized, and little--tearing down the rime-laden branches of the
trees, whose leaves and fruits they first warmed with their
bellows-breath before stuffing them into their mouths. The swampy ground
shook with their tramplings. Nod gazed in wonder as he and his brothers,
marching abreast, paced softly but doggedly on. And very soon the
watchful eyes, that glitter small in the great stone-coloured heads of
these mountainous beasts, perceived the red jackets moving betwixt the
grasses. And a silence came; the beasts stopped feeding.

"Meelmūtha glaren djhar!" muttered Thumb.

So the Mulla-mulgars pushed quietly and bravely on, without turning
their heads or letting their eyes wander. For it is said that there is
nothing frets and angers these monsters so much as a watchful eye. They
leave their feeding and wallowing, even the big Shes their suckling.
Their great bodies trembling, they stand in disquiet and unrest if but
just one small clear eye beneath its lid be fixed too close or earnestly
upon them. Oomgars, Mulgars, leopards--even down to the brooding
Mullabruk, with its clay-coloured face--they abhor all scrutiny. But why
this is so I cannot say.

It may be, then, that Nod, in his first wonder, dwelt too lingeringly
with his eye on these Lords of Munza: for a behemothian bull-Ephelanto,
with one of his tusks broken, lurched forward through the long grasses,
his tail stock-stiff behind him, and stood in their path. And as the
Mulgar travellers passed him by, he wound his long, two-fingered trunk
round Nod's belly, shook him softly, and lifted him high above the sedge
into the air.

At this many other of the Ephelantoes stamped across the swamp and stood
in the mist around him. Nod's hand was in his pocket and pressed against
his slim thigh-bone, and there, hard and round, he felt as in a dream
his Wonderstone. And he caught back his fears, and thus, up aloft,
twenty feet or more between earth and sky, he twisted his head and said
softly: "Deal with the Nizza-neela gently, Lord of the Forest; we are
servants of Tishnar." At the sound of the name of Tishnar all the
Ephelantoes lifted up their trunks, and with a great blast trumpeted in
unison. Whereupon the bull-Ephelanto that had, half in sport, tossed Nod
up into the air set him gently on the earth again. And the three
brothers, hastening their hobbling pace a little, journeyed on once
more.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV


A little before evening Thumb suddenly stopped, and stood listening.
They went on a little farther, and again he stood still, with lifted
head, snuffing the air. And soon they all heard plainly the sound of a
great river. In the last light of sunset the travellers broke out of the
forest and looked down on the waters of the deep and swollen Obea-munza.
Along its banks grew giant sedge, stiff and grey with frost like meal.
In this sedge little birds were disporting themselves, flitting and
twittering, with long plumes of every colour that changes in the
sunlight, brushing off with their tiny wings the gathered hoarfrost into
the still sunset air. The Mulgars stood like painted wooden images, with
their bundles and cudgels, staring down at the river, wide and
turbulent, its gloomy hummocks of ice and frozen snow nodding down upon
the pale green waters. They glanced at one another as if with the
question on their faces, "How now, O Mulla-mulgars?"

"'His country lies beyond and beyond,'" muttered Thimble. "'Forest and
river, forest, swamp, and river.' Could, then, our father Seelem walk on
water?"

Thumb coughed in his throat. "What matters it? He went: we follow," he
grunted stubbornly. "We must journey on till our wings grow, Mulla
Thimble, or till your long legs can straddle bank to bank." And they all
three stared in silence again at the swirling icy water.

Now, it was just beginning to be twilight, which is many times more
brief than England's in Munza, and the frozen forest was utterly still
in the fading rose and purple, the beasts not yet having come down to
drink. And while the travellers stood listening, there came, as it were
from afar off, the beating of a drum--seven hollow beats, and then
silence.

"What in Munza, Thumb, makes a noise like that?" Nod whispered. "Listen,
listen!"

They all three hearkened again, with heads bent and eyes fixed, and soon
once more they heard the hollow drumming. Thumb shook his head uneasily.

"It is wary walking, my brothers," he said; "maybe there are
Oomgar-nuggas [black men] by the riverside; or maybe it is one of the
great hairy Gunga-mulgars whose country our father Seelem told me lies
five days' journey towards the daybreak. Whicheversoever, Mulla-mulgars,
we will hobble on and discover."

Thimble dropped lightly, and rested on all-fours a moment. His eyes
squinted a little, for he greatly feared the drumming they had heard.

But Thumb, moving softly, edged watchfully on, and Thimble and Nod
followed as he led along the reedy bank of the river. Ever and again
they heard the drumming repeated, but it seemed no less distant, so they
squatted down to eat while there was light enough in the sky to find the
way from fingers to mouth. They sat down under a twisted
Bōōbab-tree, opened their bundles, and took out the frosted nuts
and fruits which they had lately gathered for their supper. But it was
so bitterly cold by the waterside Nod could scarcely crack his shells
between his chattering teeth. And now the waning moon was beginning to
silver river and forest. From the farther bank rose the cries of Munza's
beasts come down to drink, mournful, lean, and fierce from hunger and
cold. Soon the long-billed river-birds began their night-talk across the
water. And while the Mulgars were sitting silently munching, out of the
shadow before their faces came on her soundless pads a young
she-leopard, and with catlike face stood regarding them.

Thumb and Thimble dropped softly their hands, and very slowly stooped
their stiff-haired heads. But the leopard, after regarding them awhile,
and seeing them to be three together and Mulgars-royal, drew back her
head, yawned, and leapt lightly back into the shadowy grasses from which
she had stolen out. "One Roses brings many," said Thumb sourly; "let us
hobble on, Mulla-mulgars, until we find a quieter sleeping-place."

But it was now so dark beside the river that the Mulgars had to stop and
walk on the knuckles of their hands, as do all the Munza-mulgars. And
while they walked heedfully forward, they heard the trump-billed
river-birds calling their secrets one to another:

    "I see Mulgars, one, two, three,
      Creeping, crawling, one, two, three."

Once Thumb trod on a forest-pig that was lying half dead with cold under
a root of Samarak. But the pig was too weak to squeal. Nod stooped and
gave him three Ukka-nuts and a pepper-pod. "There, pig," he said, "tell
your brothers who stole my bundle that Nod Nizza-neela gave you these
when you were frozen." And the pig, being a pig, opened its slits of
eyes and feebly snapped at his fingers. Nod laughed and hastened after
his brothers.

Over the half-moon a cloud of snow was drawing, and soon the whispering
flakes began to float again between the branches. The wind that blew
steadily down the river was sharp and icy. The travellers were afraid,
if they slept in the trees again, they would be frozen. And if even one
big toe of any one of them got frost-bitten, how distant would the
Valley of Tishnar seem then! They heard, too, now and then the faint
sounds of snapping twig and rustling reed, and a low whimpering growl
would sometimes set the giant grasses trembling. Stiff and crusted with
frost, and in constant danger of falling into the river, they crawled
stubbornly on.

And suddenly straight before them burned out a light in the darkness
that was neither of moon, star, nor frost-fire. On they rustled, very
warily now, because they knew somewhere here must lurk the Oomgar-nugga
or Gunga-mulgar whose drumming they had heard. One by one they
presently crept out of the sedge, and stood up a few paces from a kind
of huddle or hut, standing crooked and smoking in the moonlight, and
built of two or three rows of huge stakes, three times plaited, very
fast and close, with Samarak and withies of all kinds. It stood about
three Mulgars high, and its walls were more than four spans thick.

The light which the travellers had espied burning in the distance
streamed from a misshapen window-hole far above Thimble's head. The
Mulgars stood staring at one another in the shadow of the black forest,
and now and then they would hear a rumble or clatter from behind the
thick walls, and presently a sneeze or cough. After which would suddenly
roll out the loud and hollow drumming of the great creature within.

So Thumb bade Nod climb softly on to Thimble's shoulder, and very slowly
lift his face up and look in. Up went Nod, and softly drew his
sheep-skinned head into the light. And the first thing he noticed was a
wonderful steaming smell of broth cooking, and then, as he pushed his
head farther through the window-hole, he looked down into the hut. And
he saw, sitting there on a huge bench before his eating-board, a
gigantic Gunga-mulgar in a shift or shirt of fish-skin. He was guzzling
down broth out of a gourd, and fishing for titbits of fish-fat in it
with a wooden prong or skewer. He knew his comfort, this ugly Gunga. He
sat with crossed legs before a blazing fire. It shone on his fangs and
teeth and flaming eyes. A huge axe, made out of a stone, hung on the
wall. In one corner lay a heap of brushwood and fish-bones, and in a
hole in the ground a pile of logs. There were skins, too, on the walls
of fishes and birds and little furry beasts, and two fat hog-fish shone
silvery in the fire-light. Besides these, there was an Oomgar-nugga's
bow of wood, thrice strung with twisted string. But what pleased Nod
most to see, as he peeped stealthily down through the thorny wattle
window, was an old grey Burbhrie cat, which sat washing her face in
front of the fire.

He was still peeping and peering into the hut, when Thumb pinched his
leg to bid him come down. So he slid cautiously down Thimble's back into
the cold moonlight again, and told his brothers all he had seen.

"Yes, Mulla-mulgars," he said, "and beside his bow and his sharp-nosed
darts, he has three big knubbly cudgels in the corner higher than is
Nod. He sits there, muttering and chuffing and sticking a long wood spit
in his soup, and then he coughs and says 'Ug!' and beats his black fists
on his chest till the flames shake."

Thumb's short thick scalp twitched to and fro as he sat on his heels,
staring into the moonlight. "Is he very big and strong? Is he as broad
and thick as Thumb?" he said.

"He's sitting in a spangly shirt," said Nod, "and his arms are like
Bōōbab-roots--like Bōōbab-roots--and his eyes,
Mulla-mulgars, they burn in bony houses, and his face is black as
charcoal."

Thumb lifted his face uneasily and yawned. "We will push on; we will not
meddle with the Gunga, my brothers," he said. "Better sleep cold than
never wake." He laughed, and patted Nod on the head with his
stump-thumbed hand, just as Seelem used to do when Nod was a baby. So
they crept softly past the huddle on their fours, turning their heads
this way, that way, snuffing softly along on an icy path that led
through the sword-grass to the river's edge. And there, tossing lightly
on the water, they found a boat, or Bobberie, of Bemba-wood and skin
pegged down with wooden pegs. It was moored fast with a rope of Samarak,
and two broad paddles lay inside it. All this the travellers saw faintly
in the moonlit dusk. Far away they heard the barking and weeping of
Coccadrilloes as they stooped together over the Bobberie, rising and
falling on the gloomy water.

"Let us not trouble the Gunga at his supper," said Thimble, "but get in
first and ask leave after."

And Thumb began softly hauling on the rope. But the smooth round stone
on which they stood was coated green with ice, and as he pulled his foot
slipped. He flung out his arms: down went Thumb; down went Nod. No
sooner had their uproar died away than an angry and ogreish voice broke
out from the hut. Thumb, with Thimble at his heels, had only just time
enough to scramble off and hide himself in the giant sedge before down
swung the gibbering Gunga on the crutches of his hairy arms to see what
was amiss, and who was meddling with his boat.

There he found Nod, floating like a sheeny bubble in his puffed-out
sheep's-jacket on the icy water. He stooped down and clawed him up with
one enormous paw, and carried him off into his hut. Then, putting up the
wooden door, he sat him down with a shout before his blazing fire.

"Ohé, ohé, ohé!" he bellowed. "Zutha mu beluthli zakketi zanga xūt!"

Nod, cold and trembling, lifted his little grey face out of his
streaming sheep's-coat and shook his head.

Then the Gunga, seeing this crackle-shell did not understand his
language, bawled at him in Munza-mulgar: "Thief, thief! What were you
after, fishing from great Gunga's boat?" Nod shook his head again, for
he expected every moment that great hand to clutch him up and fling him
into the fire.

"Thief, thief, and son of a thief!" squalled the Gunga again, opening
his great mouth.

But at that Nod's wits grew suddenly clear and still. "Not so fast--not
so fast, Master Gunga," he said. "Mulla-mulgars are neither thieves nor
sons of thieves. Squeal that at the Munza-mulgars, not at Ummanodda!"

The old Gunga stared with jutting teeth. "Mulla-mulgars," he grunted
mockingly. "Off with that sheep-skin, Prince of Fleas! I'll skin ye
'fore I cook ye!"

Nod stared bravely into the glinting sooty face. "Gunga duseepi sooklar,
by Nōōmanossi's harp!"

The old Gunga stooped closer on his fleshless legs and blinked. "What
knows a fly-catching Skeeto of Nōōmanossi's harp?" he said.

"What knows a fish-bait Gunga of the Princes of Tishnar?" Nod answered,
and calmly sat down beside the old Burbhrie cat on a log in front of the
fire. The savage old Puss stretched out her claws, spread back her
tufted ash-coloured ears, and with grey-green eyes stared fiercely into
his face. But Nod clutched tight his Wonderstone, and paid no heed; and
soon she lazily turned again to the flames, and began to purr like a
nestful of Nikkanakkas.

The Gunga stared, too, snapped his great jaws, coughed, then beat with
his warty fist on his great breast. "Ohé, ohé!" he said. "I meant no
evil to the Mulla-mulgar. Princes of Tishnar journey not often past old
Gunga's house. I hutch alone, far from my own country, Royal Stranger,
with only my black-man's Bobberie for friend."

Nod, when he heard this, almost laughed out. "Not now, 'Prince of
Bonfires,' nor 'Noddle of Pork,'" he thought, "but 'Royal Stranger,' and
'Prince of Tishnar.'"

"Why, then," he said aloud to the Gunga, "tongues chatter best when they
have something good to say. I'll take a platter of soup with you, Friend
of Fishes. And better still, I'll dry my magic coat." He slipped out of
his dripping jacket, and spread it out in front of the fire, and there
he sat, slim and silky, in his little cotton-leaf breeches, scratching
Puss's head and pretending himself at home. But the old Fish-catcher's
bloodshot eyes were watching--watching all the time. He was thinking
what snug and beautiful breeches that sheep's-coat would make him this
icy weather. But he thought, too, it would be best to speak civilly and
smoothly to his visitor--at least, for the present. Not even a
Gunga-mulgar cares to quarrel with peaceful Tishnar.

"Make yourself easy, Traveller," he said, nodding his peaked head with a
hideous smile. "The moon was at hide-and-seek when I found you in the
water; I could not see your royal countenance. But Simmul, she knows
best." The old Burbhrie cat turned to her master at sound of her name,
put up her tufted paw towards Nod, and mewed.

"Ohé, ohé!" said the Gunga mournfully. "She's mewing 'Magic.' And what
knows a feeble old Fish-catcher of Magic?" He poured out some soup into
a bowl, put in a skewer, and handed it to Nod.

"I will hang the Royal Stranger's beautiful sheep's-coat on a hook," he
said slyly. "There it will dry much quicker."

But Nod guessed easily what he was after. Once hung up there, how was he
ever going to reach his jacket down again? "No, no," says he; "it's
nearly dry already."

He took the gourd of soup between his knees. It tasted strong of fish,
and was green with a satiny river-weed; but it was hot and sweetish, and
he supped it up greedily. And just as he was tilting the bowl for the
last mouthful he looked up and saw Thumb's round, astonished face
staring in at the little dark window. He put down his gourd and burst
out laughing.

"What makes the stranger laugh?" said the old Gunga-mulgar. "It's very
good broth."

"I was laughing," said Nod, "laughing at that last fish I caught."

"Was it a big fish--a fat, heavy fish?" said the Gunga.

Nod stared, with one eye shut and his head a little awry, at the two
hog-fish dangling on the wall. "Five times as big as them," he said.

"Five?" said the Gunga.

"Five or six," said Nod.

"Or six!" said the Gunga.

"Truly," said Nod softly, "he fishes not for minnows who knows the magic
fish-song of the Water-middens."

The old Gunga turned his great black skull, and beneath the beetling
porches of his eyes glowered greedily on Nod. "And what," he said
cunningly--"what song is that, O Royal Stranger?" And he stooped down
suddenly and pushed Nod's jacket under the bench.

"Why do you push my sheep's-coat under the bench?" said Nod angrily.

"I smelt--I smelt," said Gunga, throwing back his head, "scorching. But
softly, Mulla-mulgar. What is this Water-middens' song that catches
fishes five--six times as big as mine? And if you know all this wisdom,
and are truly a Prince of Tishnar, why do you sit here, this freezing
night, supping up a poor old Fish-catcher's broth?"

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER V


By this time, it was plain, Thimble and Thumb had found something to
raise them to the window-hole, for Nod, as he glanced up, saw half of
both their astonished faces (one eye of each) peering in at the window.
He waved his lean little arms, and their faces vanished.

"Why do you wave your long thumbs in the air?" said the old Gunga
uneasily.

"I wave to Tishnar," said Nod, "who watches over her wandering Princes,
and will preserve them from thieves and cunning ones. And as for your
filthy green-weed soup, how should a Mulla-mulgar soil his thumbs with
gutting fish? And as for the Water-middens' song, _that_ I cannot teach
you, nor would I teach it you if I could, Master Fish-catcher. But I can
catch fish with it."

The old Gunga squatted close on his stool, and grinned as graciously as
he could. "I am poor and growing old," he said, "and I cannot catch fish
as once I could. How is that done, O Royal Traveller?"

Nod stood up and put his finger on his lips. "Secrets, Puss!" says he,
and stepped softly over and peeped out of the door. He came back.
"Listen," he said. "I go down to the water--at daybreak; oh yes, just at
daybreak. Then I row out a little way in my little Bobberie, quite,
quite alone--no one must be near to spy or listen; then I cast my nets
into the water and sing and sing."

"What nets?" said the Gunga.

Nod dodged a crisscross with his finger in the air.

"Sōōtli, sōōtli," mewed Puss, with her eyes half shut.

The old Gunga wriggled his head with his great lip sagging. "What
happens then?" said he.

"Then," said Nod, "from far and near my Magic draws the fishes, head,
fin, and tail, hundreds and hundreds, all to hear my Water-middens'
lovely song."

"And what then?" said Gunga.

"Then," said Nod, peeping with his eye, "I look and I look till I see
the biggest fish of all--seven, eight, nine times as big as that up
there, and I draw him out gently, gently, just as I choose him, into my
Bobberie."

"And wouldn't _any_ fish come to the little Prince unless he fished
alone?" said the greedy Gunga.

"None," said Nod. "But there, why should we be gossiping of fishing? My
boat is far away."

"But," said the Gunga cunningly, "I have a boat."

"Ohé, maybe," said Nod easily. "One cannot drown on dry land. But I did
speak of a Bobberie of skin and Bemba-wood, made by the stamping
Oomgar-nuggas next the sea."

"Ay," said the Gunga triumphantly, "but that's just what my Bobberie
_is_ made of, and I broke the backbone of the Oomgar-nugga chief that
made it with one cuff of my cudgel-hand."

Nod yawned. "Tishnar's Prince is tired," he said, "and cannot talk of
fishes any more. A bowlful more broth, Master Fish-catcher, and then
I'll just put on my jacket and go to sleep." And he laughed, oh, so
softly to himself to see that sooty, gluttonous, velvety face, and the
red, gleaming eyes, and the thick, twitching thumbs.

"Ootz nuggthli!" coughed the Gunga sourly. He ladled out the broth,
bobbing with broken pods, with a great nutshell, muttering angrily to
himself as he stooped over the pot. And there, as soon as he had turned
his back, came those two dark wondering faces at the window, grinning to
see little Nod so snug and comfortable before the fire.

And when the Gunga had poured out the broth, he brought his stool nearer
to Nod, and, leaning his great hands on the floor, he said: "See here,
Prince of Tishnar, if I lend you my skin Bobberie to-morrow morning,
will you catch _me_ some fish with your magic song?"

Nod frowned and stared into the fire. "The crafty Gunga would be peeping
between the trees," he said, "and then----"

"What then?" said he.

"Then Tishnar's Meermuts would come with their silver thongs and drive
you squalling into the water. And the Middens would pick your eyes out,
Master Fish-catcher."

"I promise, I promise," said the old Gunga, and his enormous body
trembled.

"Where is this talked-of Bobberie?" said Nod solemnly. "Was it that old
log Nod saw when whispering with the Water-middens?"

"Follow, follow," said the other. "I'll show the Prince this log." But
first Nod stooped under the bench, and pulled out his sheep's-coat and
put it on. Then he followed the old Fish-catcher down his frosty path
between its banks of snow, clear now in the silver shining of the moon.

The Fish-catcher showed him everything--how to untie the knotted rope of
Samarak, how to use the paddles, where the mooring-stone for deep water
was. He held it up in his hand, a great round stone as big as a
millstone. Nod listened and listened, half hiding his face in his jacket
lest the Gunga-mulgar should see him laughing. Last of all, the
Fish-catcher, lifting him lightly in his hand, pointed across the turbid
water, and bade him have care not to drift out far in his fishing, for
the stream ran very swiftly, the ice-floes or hummocks were sharp, and
under the Shining-one, he said, snorting River-horses and the weeping
Mumbo lurk.

"Never fear, Master Fish-catcher," said Nod. "Tishnar will watch over
me. How many big fish, now, can the old Glutton eat in comfort?"

The Gunga lifted his black bony face, and glinted on the moon. "Five
would be good," he said. "Ten would be better. Ohé, do not count, Royal
Traveller. It makes the head ache after ten." And he thought within
himself what a fine thing it was to have kept this Magic-mulgar, this
Prince of Tishnar, for his friend, when he might in his rage have flung
him clean across Obea-munza into that great Bōōbab-tree grey in
the moon. "He shall teach me the Middens' song, and then I'll fish for
myself," he thought, all his thick skin stirring on his bones with
greed.

So he cozened and cringed and flattered, and used Nod as if he were his
mother's son. He made him lie on his own bed; he put on him a great skin
ear-cap; he filled a bowl with the hot fish-water to bathe his feet; and
he fetched out from a lidded hole in the floor a necklet of scalloped
Bamba-shells, and hung it round his slender neck.

But Nod, as soon as he lay down, began thinking of those poor
Mulla-mulgars, his brothers, hungry and shivering in the tree-tops. And
he pondered how he could help them. Presently he began to chafe and toss
in his bed, to sigh and groan.

Up started the old Gunga from his corner beside the fire. "What ails the
Prince? Why does he groan? Are you in pain, Mulla-mulgar?"

"In pain!" cried Nod, as if in a great rage, "How shall a Prince sleep
with twice ten thousand Gunga fleas in his blanket?"

He got up, dragging after him the thick Munzaram's fleece off his bed,
and, opening the door, flung it out into the snow. "Try that, my hungry
hopping ones," he said, and pushed up the door again. "Now I must have
another one," he said.

The old Fish-catcher excused himself for the fleas. "It is cold to comb
in the doorway," he said, rubbing his flat nose. And he took another
woolly skin out of his earth-cupboard and laid it over Nod.

"That's one for Thumb," Nod said to himself, laughing. And presently
once more he began fretting and tossing. "Oh, oh, oh!" he cried out,
"What! More of ye! more of ye!" and with that away he went again, and
flung the second ram's fleece after the first.

"Master Traveller, Master Traveller!" yelped the old Fish-catcher,
starting up, "if you throw all my blankets out, those thieves the
smudge-faces will steal them."

"Better no blankets than a million fleas," said Nod; "and yours, Master
Fish-catcher, are as greedy as Ephelanto tics. And now I think I will
sleep by the fire, then the first peep of day will shine in my eyes from
that little window-hole up there, and wake me to my fishing."

"Udzmutchakiss" ("So be it"), growled the Gunga. But he was very angry
underneath. "Wait ye, wait ye, wait ye, my pretty Squirrel-tail," he
kept muttering to himself as he sat with crossed arms. "For every
blanket a Bobberie or great fish."

But Nod had never felt so merry in his life. To think of his brothers
wrapped warm in the Gunga-mulgar's blankets!--He laughed aloud.

"What ails the Traveller? What is he mocking at now?" said the
Fish-catcher, glowering out of his corner.

"Why," said Nod, "I laughed to hear the mice in this box hanging over my
head."

"Mice?" said the Gunga.

"Why, yes; a score or more," said Nod. "And one old husky Muttakin keeps
saying, 'Nibble all, nibble all; leave not one whole, my little pretty
ones--not the crumb of a crumb for the ugly old glutton.' I think, O
generous Gunga, she means the bread of Sudd, I smell."

At that the Gunga flamed up in a fury. He rushed to his food-box,
shouting, "Will ye, oh, will ye, ye nibbling thieves!" And, opening the
door, he flung it after the blankets--Sudd-loaves, Nanoes, river-weed,
and all. And he stood a minute in the doorway, looking out on the cold,
moonlit snow.

"Shut to the door, shut to the door, Master Fish-catcher," called Nod.
"I hear a distant harp-playing."

The Gunga very quickly shut the door at that. But he came to the fire
and stood leaning on his hand, looking into it, very sullen and angry.
"Did I not say it, Prince of Tishnar?" he said. "My blankets are gone
already. Stolen!"

"Sleep softly, my friend," said Nod, "and weary me not with talking.
There's better rams in the forest than ever were flayed. Your blankets
will creep back, never fear. Even to a Mullabruk his own fleas! But,
there! I'll make magic even this very moment, and to-morrow, when you go
down to the river to fetch up the fish, there shall your blankets be,
folded and civeted, on the stones by the water."

Then he rose up in his littleness, and began to dance slowly from one
foot to the other, waving his lean arms over the fire, and singing, in
the secret language of the Mulla-mulgars, as loud as ever he could:

    "Thumb, Thimble, Mulgar meese,
      In your blankets dream at ease,
    And never mind the frozen fleas;
      But don't forget the loaves and cheese!"

"It is very strange magic," said the Fish-catcher.

"Nay," said Nod; "they were very strange fleas."

"And 'Thumthimble'--what does that mean?"

"'Thumb' means short and fat, and 'Thimble' means long and lean, which
is Mulgar-royal for both kinds, Master Fish-catcher."

"Ohé! the Prince knows best," said the old Gunga; "but _I_ never heard
such magic. And I've watched the Dancing Oomgars leagues and leagues
from here, and drummed them home to their Shes."

Nod yawned.

As soon as it was daybreak the old Fish-catcher, who had scarcely slept
a wink for thinking of the fishes he was to have for his breakfast, came
and woke Nod up. And Nod said: "Now I go, Master Fish-catcher; but be
sure you do not venture one toe's breadth beyond the door till you hear
me bringing back the fishes."

"How can the Prince carry them, fishes big as that?" said the Gunga.

"One at a time, my friend, as Ephelantoes root up trees," said Nod,
staring at his bristling arms and tusks of teeth. "Ohé!" he went on,
"when you hear my sweet-sounding Water-middens' song, you will not be
able to keep yourself from peeping. You must be bound with Cullum,
Master Fish-catcher. Oh, I should weep riversful of salt tears if the
Water-middens picked your gentle eyes out."

At first the cunning old Gunga would not consent to be bound up. But Nod
refused to stir until he did. So at last he fetched a thick rope of
Samarak (which is stronger and tougher than Cullum) out of his old
chest or coffer, and Nod wound it round and round him--legs, arms, and
shoulders--and tied the ends to the great fish-scaly table.

"Sit easy, my friend," said he; "my magic begins wonderfully to burn in
me." And, without another word, he skipped out and pulled up the door
behind him.

Words could not tell how rejoiced were his brothers to see him from
their tree-tops come frisking across the snow. Away went the travellers
in the first light, hastening like thieves in their jackets, Nod in his
sheep's-coat leading the way. They left the blankets as Nod had promised
the Gunga. Then, one, two, three, they pushed the Bobberie into deep
water. In jumped Nod, in jumped Thimble, in jumped Thumb. Out splashed
the heavy paddles, and soon the Bobberie was floating like a cork among
the ice-humps in the red glare of dawn. They shoved off, Thumb at one
paddle, Thimble and Nod at the other. The farther they floated, the
swifter swept the water. And soon, however hard they pushed at the heavy
paddles, the Bobberie began twirling round and round, zig-zagging faster
and faster down with the stream.

But scarcely were they more than fifteen fathoms from the bank when a
shrill and piercing "Illa olla! illa olla!" broke out behind them. No
need to look back. There on the bank in his glistening fish-skins,
gnashing his teeth and beating with his crusted hands on the drum of his
great chest, stood the terrible Gunga-mulgar, his Samarak-ropes all
burst asunder. He stooped and tore up huge stones and lumps of ice as
big as a sheep, and flung them high into the air after the tossing
Bobberie. Splash, splash, splash, they fell, around the three poor
sweating travellers, drenching them with water and melting snow. The
faster they paddled the faster swirled the water, and the thicker came
tumbling the Gunga's huge boulders of stone and ice. Let but one fall
plump upon their Bobberie, down they would go to be Mumbo-meat for good
and all. But ever farther the surging water was sweeping them on.
Suddenly the hailstones ceased, and they spied their dreadful enemy
swinging furiously back on his thick five-foot arms.

"Gone, gone!" cried Thimble in triumph, leaning breathless on his
paddle.

"Crow when your egg's hatched, brother Thimble," muttered Thumb. "He's
gone to fetch his bow."

True it was. Down swung the gibbering Gunga, his Oomgar-nugga's bow
across his shoulder. Crouching by the water-side, he stretched its
string with all his strength. And a thin, keen dart sung shrill as a
parakeet over their heads. Again, again, and then it seemed to Nod a
red-hot skewer had suddenly spitted him through the shoulder, and he
knew the Fish-catcher had aimed true. He plucked the arrow out and waved
it over his head, scrunching his teeth together, and saying nothing save
"Paddle, Thimble! Paddle, O Thumb!"

Mightily they leaned on their broad, unwieldy paddles. But now, not
looking where the water was sweeping them, of a sudden the Bobberie
butted full tilt into a great hummock of ice, and water began welling up
through a hole in the bottom. Nod knelt down, and, while his brothers
paddled, he flung out the water as fast as he could with his big
fish-skin cap. But fast though he baled, the water rilled in faster, and
just as they floated under a long, snow-laden branch of an
Ollaconda-tree, the Bobberie began to sink.

Then Thimble cried in a loud voice, "Guzza-guzza-nahoo!" and, with a
great leap, sprang out of the boat and caught the drooping branch. Thumb
clutched his legs and Nod Thumb's; and there they were, all three
swinging over the water, while the branch creaked and trembled over
their heads.

Down sank the staved-in Bobberie, and up--one, two, three, four,
five--floated huge, sluggish Mumboes or Coccadrilloes, with dull,
grass-green eyes fixed gluttonously on the dangling Mulgars. And a thick
muskiness filled the air around them.

Inch by inch Thimble edged along the bough, until, because of the
jutting twigs and shoots, he could edge no farther. Then, slowly and
steadily at first, but gradually faster, the three travellers began to
swing, sweeping to and fro through the air, above the enraged and
snapping Coccadrilloes. The wind rushed past Nod's ears; his jacket
flapped about him. "Go!" squealed Thumb; and away whisked Nod, like a
flying squirrel across the water, and landed high and dry on the bank
under the wide-spreading Ollaconda-tree. Thumb followed. Thimble, with
only his own weight to lift, quickly scrambled up into the boughs above
him. And soon all three Mulla-mulgars were sitting in safety, munching
what remained of the Gunga's Sudd-bread, and between their mouthfuls
shouting mockery at the musky Coccadrilloes.

While they were thus eating happily together Thumb suddenly threw up his
hands and called: "Blood, blood, O Ummanodda--blood, red blood!" And
then it seemed to Nod, trees, sky, and river swam mazily before his
eyes. Darkness swept up. He rolled over against a jutting root of the
Ollaconda, and knew no more.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI


When Nod opened his eyes again, he found himself blinking right into the
middle of a blazing fire, over which hung sputtering a huddled carcass
on a long black spit. Nod's head ached; his shoulder burned and
throbbed. He touched it gently, and found that it was swathed and bound
up with leaves that smelt sleepily sweet and cool. He looked around him
as best he could, but at first could see nothing, because of the
brightness of the flames. Gradually he perceived small grey creatures,
with big heads and white hands, that reached almost to the ground,
hastening to and fro. His smooth brown poll stood up stiff with terror
at sight of them, for he knew he must be lying in the earth-mounds of
the flesh-eating Minimuls.

    [Illustration: THE WONDERSTONE.]

Memories one by one returned to him--the Bobberie, the river, the
yapping Coccadrilloes, the burning dart. One thing he could not
recall--how he came to be lying alone and helpless here in the
root-houses of these cunning enemies of all Mulgars, great and small. He
remembered the stories Mutta-matutta used to tell him of their snares
and poisons and enticements; of their earth-galleries and their horrible
flesh-feasts at the full moon. His one comfort was that he still lay in
his sheep's jacket, and felt his little Wonderstone pressed close
against his side.

When one of the Minimuls that stood basting the spit saw that Nod was
awake he summoned others who were standing near, and many stooped softly
over, staring at him, and whispering together. Nod put his finger to his
tongue, and said, "Walla!" One of them instantly shuffled away and
brought him a little gourd of a sweetish juice like Keeri, which greatly
refreshed him.

Then he called out, "Mulgars, Mulla-mulgars?" This, too, they seemed at
once to understand. For, indeed, Seelem had told Nod that these Minimuls
are nothing but a kind of Munza-mulgar, though their faces more closely
resemble the twilight or moonshine Mulgars, and for craft and greed the
dwarf Oomgar-nuggas, that long ago had trooped away beyond Arakkaboa.
Nod heard presently many faint voices, and then thick guttural cries of
pain and anger. And by turning a little his head he could see a host of
these mouse-faced mannikins tugging at a rope. At the end of this rope,
all bound up with Cullum, with sticky leaves plastered over their eyes,
and hung with dangling festoons of greenery and flowers, like
jacks-in-the-green, Thumb and Thimble hobbled slowly in from under an
earthen arch. Nod was weak with pain. He cried out hollowly to see his
brothers blind and helpless.

Thumb heard the sound, and answered him boldly in Mulgar-royal. "Is
that the voice of my brother, the Mulla-mulgar, Nizza-neela Ummanodda?"

"O Thumb!" Nod groaned, "why am I here in comfort, while you and Thimble
are dragged in, bound with Cullum, and hung all over with dreadful
leaves and flowers?"

"Have no fear, Prince of Bonfires," said Thumb with a laugh. "The
Minimuls caught us smelling at their Gelica-nuts, and sleeping in the
warmth of their earth-mounds. We were too frozen and hungry to carry you
any farther. They are fattening us for their Moon-feast. But it will be
little more than a picking of bones, Ummanodda. And even if they do spit
up over their fire, we will taste as sweet as Mulla-mulgars can." And he
burst out into such a squeal of angry laughter the Minimuls began
chattering again and waving their hands.

"Talk not of meat and bones to me, Thumb. If you die, I die too. Tell
me, only so that they do not understand, what is Nod to do."

Then Thimble, who was standing in the shadow, hobbled a little nearer
into the light of the fire, and lifting up his leaf-smeared face as if
to see, said: "Have no fear for yourself, Nod. They have caught us, but
not for long. But you they dare not frizzle a hair of, little brother,
because of Tishnar's Wonderstone sewn up in your sheep's-coat. They have
smelt out its magic. Keep the stone safe, then, Ummanodda, and, when you
are alone, rub it Sāmaweeza as Mutta told you before she died.
Tishnar, perhaps, will answer. See only that none of these miching
mouse-faces are near. Had we but been awake when they found us!..."

But the Minimuls began to grow restless at all this palaver, for, though
the Munza-mulgar tongue is known to them, they cannot understand, except
a word here and there, the secret language of Mulgar-royal. So they laid
hold of the Cullum-ropes again, and lugged Thumb and Thimble back under
the sandy arch through which they had come. Thumb had only time enough
to cry in a loud voice, "Courage, Nizza-neela," before he was dragged
again out of sight and hearing.

And Nod remembered that when the Gunga-mulgar had led him down out of
his huddle to show him the Bobberie, the moon was shining then at
dwindling halves. So he knew that, unless many days had passed since
then, it would be some while yet before these Minimuls made their
cannibal Moon-feast. He lay still, with eyes half shut, thinking as best
he could, with an aching head and throbbing shoulder.

The firelight glanced on the earthy roof far above him. Here and there
the contorted root of some enormous forest-tree jutted out into the air.
There was a continued faint rustle around him, as of bees in a hive or
ants in a pine-wood. This was the shuffling of the Minimuls' shoes,
which are flat, like sandals, and made of silver grass plaited together,
that rustles on the sandy floor of their chambers and galleries. This
plaited grass they tie, too, round their middles for a belt or pouch,
beneath which, as they walk, their long lean tails descend. Their fur
shines faintly shot in moon or firelight, and is either pebble-grey or
sand-coloured. It never bristles into hair except about their polls and
chops, where it stands in a smooth, even wall, about one and a half to
two inches high, leaving the remnant of their faces light and bare.
They stand for the most part about three spans high in their grass
slippers. Their noses are even flatter than the noses of the Mullabruks.
Their teeth stand out somewhat, giving their small faces a cunning
mouse-look, which never changes. Their eyes are round and thin-lidded,
and almost as colourless as glass. Yet behind their glassiness seems to
be set a gleam, like a far and tiny taper shining, so that they are
perfectly visible in the dark, or even dusk. Thus may they be seen, a
horde of them together in the evening gloom of the forest when they go
Mulgar-hunting. When they are closely looked on, they can, as it were
within their eyes, shut out this gleam--it vanishes; but still they
continue to see, though dimly. By day their eyes are as empty as pure
glass marbles. Their smell is faintly rank, through eating so much
flesh. The she and young Minimuls feed in the deeper chambers of their
mounds, and never venture out.

Nod was falling into a nap from weariness and pain, when there came
spindling along an old sallow-hued Earth-mulgar, whose eyes were pink,
rather than glass-grey, like the others. He shook his head this way,
that way, muttering his magic over Nod; then, with a mottled gourd
beside him, he very gently and dexterously rolled back the strip or
bandage of leaves on Nod's shoulder, and peered close into his poisoned
wound. He probed it softly with his hairless fingers. Then out of the
pouch hanging on his stomach he took fresh leaves, smeared and stalked,
a little clay pot of green healing-grease, and anointed the sore. This
he rubbed ever so smoothly with his two middle fingers. After which he
bound all up again so skilfully with leaves and grass that it seemed to
Nod his wounded shoulder was the easiest and most comfortable part of
his body. Out of his pinkish eyes he gazed greedily into Nod's face for
a moment, and took his departure.

After he had gone, Nod smoothed his face, and with his own comb combed
himself as far as he could reach without pain. Presently shuffled along
two or three more of the Mouse-faces carrying roasted Nanoes and
Mambel-berries, and a kind of citron, like a Keeri, very refreshing;
also a little gourd of very thin Subbub. But, although he was too
wretched and too much afraid to be hungry, and shuddered at sight of the
Minimul food, Nod knew he must quickly grow strong if ever he and his
brothers were to reach the Valleys of Tishnar. So he ate and drank, and
was refreshed. Then he turned to a little sleek Minimul that tended him,
and asked him in Munza-mulgar: "Is it day--sunshine? Is it day?"

The little creature shook his head and shut his eyes, as if to signify
he did not understand the question.

Nod at that shut his eyes too, and laid his cheek on his lean little
hand, as if to say, "Sleep."

Thereupon eight thickish Minimuls came--four on either side--and hoisted
up by its handles the grass mat on which he lay, while others went
before, strewing dried leaves and a kind of forest-flower that smells
like mint when crushed, and carrying lanterns of candle-worms, while
others waddled with them, beating on little tambours of Skeeto-skin--all
this because Nod breathed magic, part his own, part his Wonderstone's.

They laid him down in a sandy chamber strewn with flowers. And, bowing
many times, their heads betwixt their rather bandy legs, they left him.
When they were gone, Nod wriggled softly up and looked about him. The
chamber was round and caved, and on the walls were still visible the
marks of the Minimuls' hands and scoops which had hollowed it out.
Through the roof a rugged root pierced, crossed over, and dipped into
the earth again. The candle-worms cast a gentle sheen on the golden
sanded walls. Hung from the roof were strings of dried flowers, shedding
so heavy and languid a smell in the narrow chamber that Nod's drowsy
eyelids soon began to droop. His bright eyes glanced like fireflies,
darting to and fro with his thoughts. But the odour of the flowers soon
soothed them all to rest. Nod fell asleep.

The next day (that is, the next Minimul day, which is Munza night) crept
slowly by. Nod was never left alone. Every hour the little
soft-shuffling Mouse-faces tended and fed and watched him, and burnt
little magic sticks around him. Three dead Skeetoes, with fast-shut
eyes, lay on the floor, shot by their poisoned darts in the dusk of the
evening, when he was carried into the big fire-chamber, or kitchen,
again. They were soon skinned and trussed by the hungry Minimuls, and
stretched along the spit. The smell of their roasting rose up in smoke.
At last came sleeping-time again. And then, when all was silent, Nod
rose softly from his grass-mat, and stealing down the low, narrow
earth-run, looked out into the kitchen where he had lain all day. The
fire was dying in faintly glowing embers. All was utterly still. But
which way should he go now, he wondered, to seek his brothers? And which
of these dark arches led to the open forest, the snow, and the
Assasimmon?

    [Illustration: NOD WAS NEVER LEFT ALONE.]

His quick eyes caught sight of the thin smoke winding silently up from
the logs. Somewhere that must escape into the air. But on high it was so
dim he could scarcely see the roof, only the steep walls, ragged with
snake-skins, and the huge pods of the silky poison-seed. He crept
stealthily under one of the arches hung at the entrance with the dried
carcass of a little fierce-faced, snow-white Gunga cub, and presently
came to where, all in their sandy beds, with their tails curled up, side
by side in double rows, the mousey Earth-mulgars slept. He returned to
the kitchen, and called softly in the hollow cavern, "Thumb, Thumb!"

Only his own voice echoed back to him. Yet a sound feeble as this awoke
the light-sleeping Minimuls. For their mounds echo more than mere
hollowness would seem to make them. The lightest stir or footfall of
beast walking above in Munza may be heard. Nod had only just time enough
to scamper up his own narrow corridor and throw himself on his mat
before a score of shuffling footfalls followed, and he felt many glassy
eyes peering closely into his face.

All the rest of that night (and for the few nights that followed)
Minimuls stood behind his bed beating faintly on their skin Zōōts
or tambours, while two others sat one on each side of him with fans of
soporiferous Moka-wood. But though they might lull Nod's lids asleep,
they couldn't still his busy brain. He dreamed and dreamed. Now, in his
dreams he was come in safety to his Uncle Assasimmon's, and they were
all rejoicing at a splendid feast, and he was dressed in beads from neck
to heel, with a hat of stained ivory and a peacock's feather. Now he was
alone in the forest in the dark, and a Talanteuti was lamenting in his
ear, "Nōōm-anossi, Nōōm-anossi." And now it seemed he sat
beneath deep emerald waters in the silver courts of the Water-middens,
amid the long gold of their streaming hair. But he would awake babbling
with terror, only to smell the creeping odour on the air of broiling
Mulgar.

One day came many Earth-mulgars from distant mounds to see this Prince
of Magic whom their kinsmen had captured in the forest. They stared at
him, sniffed, bowed, and burned smoulder-sticks, and then were led off
to stare too at fat Thumb and fattening Thimble. And that same day the
Minimuls dragged into their kitchen a long straight branch of iron-wood,
which with much labour they turned by charring into a prodigious spit.
And Nod knew his hour was come, that there was no time to be lost.

When he had once more been carried on his mat into his own chamber or
sleeping-place, he drove out the drumming and fan-waving Minimuls,
making signs to them that their noise and odour drove sleep away instead
of charming it to him. He waited on and on, tossing on his mat,
springing up to listen, hearing now some forest beast tread hollowly
overhead, and now a distant cry as if of fear or anguish. But at last,
when all was still, he very cautiously fumbled and fumbled, gnawed and
gnawed with his sharp little dog-teeth, until in the dim light of his
worm-lantern peeped out the strange pale glowing milk-white Wonderstone,
carved all over with labyrinthine beast and bird and unintelligible
characters. It lay there marvellously beautiful, as if in itself it were
all Munza-mulgar, its swamps and forests and mountains lying tinied in
the pale brown palm of his hand, and as full of changing light as the
bellies of dead fishes in the dark. He got up softly, clutching the
stone tightly in his hand. He listened. He stole down his sandy gallery,
and stood, small and hairy, in his sheep-skin, peering out into the
great evil-smelling kitchen. Then he spat with his spittle on the stone,
and began to rub softly, softly, three times round with his left thumb
Sāmaweeza, dancing lightly, and slowly the while, with eyes tight
shut and ears twitching.

And it seemed of a sudden as if all his care and trouble had been swept
away. A voice small and clear called softly within him: "Follow,
Ummanodda, follow! Have now no fear, Prince of Tishnar, Nizza-neela; but
follow, only follow!"

He opened his eyes, and there, hovering in the air, he saw as it were a
little flame, crystal clear below, but mounting to the colour of rose,
and shaped like a little pear. As soon as he looked at it it began
softly to stir and float away from him across the glowery kitchen. And
again the mysterious voice he had heard called softly: "Follow, Prince
of Tishnar, follow!" With shining eyes he hobbled warily after the
little flame that, burning tranquil in the air, about a span above his
head, was floating quietly on.

It led him past the gaunt black spit and the dying fire. It wafted
across the great kitchen to the fifth of the gloomy arches, and
stealthily as a shadow Nod stole after it. Under this arch and up the
shelving gallery gently slid the guiding flame. And now Nod saw again
the furry Earth-mulgars, lying on their stomachs in their sandy beds,
whimpering and snuffling in their sleep. On glided the flame; after it
crept Nod, scarcely daring to breathe. "Softly, now softly," he kept
muttering to himself. And now this gallery began to slope downward, and
he heard water dripping. A thin moss was growing on the stony walls. It
felt colder as he descended. But Nod kept his eyes fixed on the clear,
unswerving flame. And in the silence he heard a muffled groan, and a
harsh voice muttered drowsily, "Oo mutchee, nanga," and he knew Thumb
must be near.

The strange voice whispered: "Hasten, Ummanodda Nizza-neela; full moon
is rising!" Then Nod whimpering in his fear a little, like a cat, edged
on once more through a gallery where was laid up on sandy shelves a
great store of nuts and pods and skins and spits and sharp-edged flints.
And at last he came to where, in a filthy hollow, cold and lightless,
and oozing with dark-glistening water-drops, his brothers Thimble and
Thumb were sleeping. They were tied hand and foot with Samarak to the
thick root of a Bōōbab-tree, even their eyes bound up with sticky
leaves. Nod hobbled over and knelt down beside Thumb, and put his mouth
close to his ear. "Thumb, Thumb," says he, "it is Nod! Wake,
Mulla-mulgar; it is Nod who calls!" And he shook him by the shoulder.
Thumb stirred in his sleep and opened his mouth, so that Nod could see
the hovering flame glistening on his teeth. "Oohmah, oohmah," he
grunted, "na nasmi mutta kara theartchen!" Which means in Mulgar-royal:
"Sorry, oh sorry, don't whip me, mother dear!" And Nod knew he was
dreaming of long ago.

He shook him again, and Thumb, with a kind of groan, rolled over,
trembling, and seemed to listen. "Thumb, Thumb," Nod cried, "it's only
me; it's only Nod with the Wonderstone!" And while Nod was stripping off
the leaves and bandages which covered Thumb's eyes he told him
everything. "And don't cry out, Thumb, if Tishnar's flame burns your
shins. They've tied your legs in knots so tight with this tough Samarak,
my fingers can't undo them." So Thumb stretched out his legs, and
clenched his hands, while the flame stooped and came down, and burned
through the Samarak. He rubbed his poor singed shins where the flame had
scorched them. But now he stood up. Soon his arms were unbound, and
Thimble, too, was roused and unloosed, and they were all three ready to
tread softly out.

"Lead on, my wondrous fruit of magic!" said Nod.

The light curtsied, as it were, in the air, and glided up through the
doorway; and the three Mulla-mulgars crept out after it, Thumb and
Thimble on their fours, being too stiff to walk upright.

"Hasten, hasten, Mulla-mulgars!" said Nod softly. "The full moon is
shining; night is come. The pot is ready for the feast."

So one by one, with Nod's clear flame for guide, they trod noiselessly
up the sandy earth-run. It led them without faltering past the huddled
sleepers again; past, too, where the she-Minimuls lay cuddling their
tiny ones, and up into the big empty kitchen. Under another arch they
crept after it, along another gallery of rough steps, hollowed out of
the sandy rock, beneath great tortuous roots, through such a maze as
would have baffled a weasel.

And suddenly Thumb stopped and snuffed and snuffed again. "Immamoosa,
Immamoosa!" he grunted.

Almond and evening-blooming Immamoosa it was, indeed, which they could
smell, shedding its fragrance abroad at nightfall. And in a little while
out at last into the starry darkness they came, the great forest-trees
standing black and still around them, their huge boughs cloaked with
snow.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII


It was bitterly cold, and as the three travellers stood there, ragged
and sore and hungry, they thought they would never weary of gazing at
the starry sky and sniffing the keen night air between the trees. But
which way should they go? No path ran here, for the Earth-mulgars never
let any path grow clear around their mounds. Thumb climbed a little way
up a Gelica-tree that stood over them, and soon espied low down in the
sky the Bear's bright Seven, which circle about the dim Pole Star. So he
quickly slid down again to tell his brothers. It so happened, however,
that in this tree grows a small, round, gingerish nut that takes two
whole years to ripen, and hangs in thick clusters amid the branches.
They have a taste like cinnamon, and with these the Earth-mulgars
flavour their meat. And as Thumb slid heavily down, being stiff and sore
now, and very heavy, he shook one of these same clusters, and down it
came rattling about Nod's head. They have but thin shells, these nuts,
and are not heavy, but they tumbled so suddenly, and from such a height,
that Nod fell flat, his hands thrown out along the snow. He clambered
up, rubbing his head, and in the quietness, while they listened, they
heard as it were a distant and continuous throbbing beneath them.

Thimble crouched down, with head askew. "The Minimuls, the Zōōts!"
he grunted.

But even at the same moment Nod had cried out too. "Thumb, Thumb, O
Mulla-mulgar, the Wonderstone! the Wonderstone! the snow, the snow!" No
pale and tapering light hovered clearly beaming now beneath these cold
and starlit branches. The Mounds of the Minimuls were awake and astir.
Soon the furious little Flesh-eaters would come pouring up in their
hundreds, and to-morrow, their magic gone, all three brothers would be
quickly frizzling, with these same Gelica-nuts for seasoning, on the
spit.

Nod flung himself down; down, too, went Thumb and Thimble in the
ice-bespangled snow. At last they found the stone, shining like a pale
moon amid the twinkling starriness of the frost. But it was only just in
time. Even now they could hear the far-away crying and clamour, and the
surly Zōōt-beating of the Earth-mulgars drawing nearer and nearer.

Without pausing an instant, Nod cast the stone into his mouth for
safety, and away went the three travellers, bundle and cudgel, rags and
sheep's-coat, helter-skelter, between the silvery breaks of the trees,
scampering faster than any Mulgar, Mulla, or Munza had ever run before.
The snow was crisp and hard; their worn and hardened feet made but the
faintest flip-flap in the hush. And scarcely had they run their first
short wind out, when lo and behold! there, in a leafy bower of snow in
their path, three short-maned snorting little Horses of Tishnar, or
Zevveras, stood, rearing and chafing, and yet it seemed tethered
invisibly to that same frosty stable by a bridle from which they could
not break away.

They whinnied in concert to see these scampering Mulgars come panting
over the snow. And Nod remembered instantly the longed-for gongs and
stripes of his childhood, and he called like a parakeet: "Tishnar, O
Tishnar!" He could say no more. The Wonderstone that had lain couched on
his tongue, as he opened his mouth, slid softly back, paused for his
cry, and the next instant had glided down his throat. But by this time
Thumb had straddled the biggest of the little plunging beasts. And, like
arrows from the Gunga's bow, each with his hands clasped tight about his
Zevvera's neck, away went Thumb, away went Thimble, away went Nod, the
night wind whistling in their ears, their rags a-flutter, the clear
stripes of the Zevveras winking in the rising moon.

But the Little Horse of Tishnar which carried Nod upon his back was by
much the youngest and smallest of the three. And soon, partly because of
his youth, and partly because he had started last, he began to fall
farther and farther behind. And being by nature a wild and untamable
beast, his spirit flamed up to see his brothers out-stripping him so
fast. He flung up his head with a shrill and piercing whinny, and
plunged foaming on. The trees winked by. Now up they went, now down,
into deep and darkling glades, now cantering softly over open and
moon-swamped snow. If only he could fling the clumsy, clinging Mulgar
off his back he would soon catch up his comrades, who were fast
disappearing between the trees. He jumped, he reared, he kicked, he
plunged, he wriggled, he whinnied. Now he sped like the wind, then on a
sudden stopped dead, with all four quivering legs planted firmly in the
snow. But still Nod, although at every twist and turn he slipped up and
down the sleek and slippery shoulders, managed to cling fast with arms
and legs.

Then the cunning beast chose all the lowest and brushiest trees to run
under, whose twigs and thorns, like thick besoms, lashed and scratched
and scraped his rider. But Nod wriggled his head under his sheep's-coat,
and still held on. At last, maddened with shame and rage, the Zevvera
flung back his beautiful foam-flecked face, and with his teeth snapped
at Nod's shoulder. The Mulgar's wound was not quite healed. The gleaming
teeth just scraped his sore. Nod started back, with unclasped hands, and
in an instant, head over heels he shot, plump into the snow, and before
he could turn to scramble up, with a triumphing squeal of delight, the
little Zevvera had vanished into the deep shadows of the moon-chequered
forest.

    [Illustration: HE JUMPED, HE REARED, HE KICKED, HE PLUNGED, HE
    WRIGGLED, HE WHINNIED.]

At last Nod managed to get to his feet again. He brushed the snow out of
his eyes, and spat it out of his mouth. The Zevvera's hoof-prints were
plain in the snow. He would follow them, he thought, till he could
follow no longer. His brothers had forsaken him. His Wonderstone was
gone. He felt it even now burning like a tiny fire beneath his
breast-bone. He limped slowly on. But at every step he stumbled. His
shoulder throbbed. He could scarcely see, and in a little while down he
fell again. He lay still now, rolled up in his jacket, wishing only to
die and be at peace. Soon, he thought, the prowling Minimuls would find
him, stiff and frozen. They would wrap him up in leaves, and carry him
home between them on a pole to their mounds, and pick his small bones
for the morrow's supper. Everything he had done was foolish--the fire,
the wild pig, the Ephelantoes. He could not even ride the smallest of
the Little Horses of Tishnar. The languid warmth of his snow-bed began
to lull his senses. The moon streamed through the trees, silvering the
branches with her splendour. And in the beautiful glamour of the
moonbeams it seemed to Nod the air was aflock with tiny wings. His heavy
eyelids drooped. He was falling softly--falling, falling--when suddenly,
close to his ear, a harsh and angry voice broke out.

"Hey, Mulgar! hey, Slugabones! how come you here? What are you doing
here?"

He opened his eyes drowsily, and saw an old grey Quatta hare staring
drearily into his face with large whitening eyes.

"Sleep," he said, softly blinking into her face.

"Sleep!" snarled the old hare. "You idle Mulgars spend all your days
eating and sleeping!"

Nod shut his eyes again. "Do not begrudge me this, old hare," he said;
"'tis Nōōmanossi's."

"Where did you steal that sheep's-coat, Mulgar? And how came you and the
ugly ones to be riding under my Dragon-tree on the Little Horses of
Tishnar?"

"Why," replied Nod, smiling faintly, "I stole my sheep's-coat from my
mother, who gave it me; and as for 'riding on the Little Horses'--here I
am!"

"Where have you come from? Where are you going to?" asked the old hare,
staring.

"I've come from the Flesh-mounds of the Minimuls, and I think I'm going
to die," said Nod--"that is, if this old Quatta will let me."

The old hare stiffened her long grey ears, and stamped her foot in the
snow. "You mustn't die here," she said. "No Mulgar has ever died here.
This forest belongs to me."

In spite of all his aches and pains, Nod grinned. "Then soon you will
have Nod's little bones to fence it in with," he said.

The old hare eyed him angrily. "If you weren't dying, impudent Mulgar,
I'd teach you better manners."

Nod wriggled closer into his jacket. "Trouble not, Queen of Munza," he
said softly. "I shouldn't have time to use them now." He shut his eyes
again, and all his pain seemed to be floating away in sleep.

The old hare sat up in the snow and listened. "What's amiss in
Munza-mulgar?" she muttered to herself. "First these galloping Horses of
Tishnar, one, two, three; now the angry Zōōts of the Minimuls, and
all coming nearer?" But Nod was far away in sleep now, and numb with
cold.

She tapped his little shrunken cheek with her foot. "Even in your sleep,
Mulgar, you mustn't dream," she said. "None may dream in my forest." But
Nod made no answer even to that. She sat stiff up again, twitching her
lean, long, hairy ears, now this way, now that way. "Foh,
Earth-mulgars!" she said to herself. She stamped in the snow, and
stamped again. And in a minute another old Quatta came louping between
the trees, and sat down beside her.

"Here's an old sheep's-jacket I've found," said the old Queen Quatta,
"with a little Mulgar inside it. Let us carry it home, Sister, or the
Minimuls will steal him for their feast."

The other old Quatta raised her lip over her long curved teeth. "Pull
out the Mulgar first," she said.

But Mishcha said: "No, it is a strange Mulgar, a Mulla-mulgar, a
Nizza-neela, and he smells of magic. Take his legs, Sister, and I will
carry his head. There's no time to be lost." So these two old Quatta
hares wrapped Nod round tight in his sheep-skin coat, and carried him
off between them to their form or house in an enormous hollow
Dragon-tree unimaginably old, and very snug and warm inside, with
cotton-leaf, feathers, and dry tree-moss. There they laid him down, and
pillowed him round. And Mishcha hopped out again to watch and wait for
the Minimuls.

Sheer overhead the pygmy moon stood, when with drums beating and waving
cudgels, in their silvery girdles, leopard-skin hats, and grass shoes,
thirty or forty of the fury Minimuls appeared, hobbling bandily along,
following the hoof-prints of the galloping Zevveras in the snow. But
little clouds in passing had scattered their snow, and the track had
begun to grow faint. The old hare watched these Earth-mulgars draw near
without stirring. Like all the other creatures of Munza-mulgar, she
hated these groping, gluttonous, cannibal gnomes. When they reached the
place where Nod had fallen, the Minimuls stood still and peered and
pointed. In a little while they came scuttling on again, and there sat
old Mishcha under a great thorn-bush, gaunt in the snow.

They stood round her, waving their darts, and squeaking questions. She
watched them without stirring. Their round eyes glittered beneath their
spotted leopard-skin hats as they stood in their shimmering grasses in
the snow.

"When so many squall together," she said at last, "I cannot hear one.
What's your trouble this bright night?"

Then one among them, with a girdle of Mulla-bruk's teeth, bade the rest
be silent.

"See here, old hare," he said; "have any filthy Mulgars passed this way,
one tall and bony, one fat and hairy, and one little and cunning?"

Mishcha stared. "One and one's two, and one's three," she said slowly.
"Yes, truly--three."

"Three, three!" they cried all together--"thieves, thieves!"

Mishcha's face wrinkled. "All Mulgars are thieves," she said; "some even
eat flesh. Ugh!"

At this the Minimul-mulgars grew angry, their glassy eyes brightened.
They raised their snouts in the air and waved their darts. But the old
hare sat calmly under her roof of poisonous thorns.

"Answer us, answer us," they squeaked, "you dumb old Quatta!"

"H'm, h'm!" said Mishcha, staring solemnly. "Mulgars? There are
hundreds, and tens of hundreds of Mulgars in my forest, of more kinds
and tribes than I have hairs on my scut. How should old Mishcha raise an
eyelid at only three? Olory mi, my third-gone grandmother used to tell
me many a story of you thieving, gluttonous Mulgars, all alike, all
alike. It's sad when one's old to remember, but it's sadder to forget."

Clouds had stolen again over the moon, and snow was falling fast. Let
these evil-smelling Minimuls chatter but a little longer, she thought;
not a hoof-print would be left.

"Listen, old hare," said the chief of the Minimuls. "Have you seen three
Mulgars pass this way, two in red jackets, and one, a Nizza-neela, in a
sheep's coat, and all galloping, galloping, on three Little Horses of
Tishnar?"

Mishcha gazed at him stonily, with hatred in her eyes. She was grey with
age, and now a little peaked cap of snow crowned her head, so still she
had sat beneath the drifting flakes. "I am old--oh yes, old, and old
again," she said. "I have ruled in Munza-mulgar one hundred, two
hundred, five hundred years, but I never yet saw a Mulgar riding on a
Little Horse of Tishnar. Tell me, Wise One, which way did they
sit--_with_ the stripes, or cross-cross?"

"Answer us, grandam," squealed one of the Minimuls in a fury, "or I'll
stick a poisoned dart down your throat."

Mishcha smiled. "Better a Minimul's dart than no supper at all," she
said. "Swallow thy tongue, thou Mulgar!" she said; and suddenly her lips
curled upward, her two long front teeth gleamed, her hair bristled.
"Hobble off home, you thieving, flesh-eating, sun-hating earth-worms!
Hobble off home before ears and nose and thumbs and toes are bitten and
frozen in Tishnar's snows! Away with you, moon-maggots, grubbers of
sand!" She stamped with her foot, her old eyes greenly burning under
the bush.

The Minimuls began angrily chattering again. At last the first who had
spoken turned mousily and said: "To-day you go unharmed, old Quatta, but
to-morrow we will come with fire and burn your Dragon-tree about your
ears."

Mishcha stirred not one hair. "It's sad to burn, but it's sadder still
to freeze." Her round eyes glared beneath her snow-cap. "A long march
home to you, Minnikin-mulgar! A long march home! And if I should smell
out the Sheep's-jacket on his Little Horse of Tishnar, I will tell him
where to find you--burnt, bitten, brittle, baked hard in frozen snow!"
She turned and began to hop off slowly between the shadow-casting trees.

At this, one of the Minimuls in his fury lifted a dart and flung it at
the old hare. It stuck, quivering, in her shoulder. She turned slowly,
and stared at him through the falling flakes; then, drawing the dart out
with one of her forefeet, she spat on the point, and laid it softly down
in the snow. And so wildly she gazed at them out of her aged and
whitening eyes that the Minimuls fell into a sudden terror of the old
witch-hare, and without another word turned back in silence and scuffled
off in the thick falling snow by the way they had come.

Old Mishcha watched them till they were hidden from sight by the trees
and the clouding snow-flakes; then, muttering a little to herself,
nodding her thin long ears, she, too, turned and hopped off quickly to
her house in the old Dragon-tree.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII


Nod still lay huddled up in his jacket, his small, hairy face all drawn
and grey, his eyes tight-shut and sorrowful beneath their thick black
lashes. Mishcha squatted over him, and put her head down close to his
little body. "He breathes no more, sister, than a moth or an
Immamoosa-bud."

"Let us drag him out of his sheep-skin, and bury him in the snow," said
Môha.

But Mishcha listened more closely still. "I hear his heart beating; I
hear his drowsy blood just come and go. But what is it that, sweeter
than a panther's breath, smells so of Magic? We must not harm the little
Mulgar, sister; he is cunning. A Meermut of Magic would soon return to
plague us." So she wrapped him up still closer in dry leaves and
tree-moss, and opened his mouth to sprinkle a pinch of snow between his
lips.

All that night and the next day Nod slept without stirring. But the
evening after that, when the snow had ceased again, he opened his eyes
and called "Wallah, wallah!" Mishcha hopped off and brought him snow in
a plantain-leaf, and wrapped him up still warmer. But the little dry
herbs and powdered root she put on his tongue he choked at, and could
not swallow. His shoulder burned, he tossed to and fro with eyes
blazing. Now he would start up and shout, "Thumb, Thumb!" then presently
his face would all pucker up with fear, and he would scream, "The fire,
the fire!" and then soon after he would be whispering, "Muzza, muzza,
mutta; kara mutta, mutta!" just as if he were at home again in the
little dried-up Portingal's hut.

Mishcha did all she could to soothe and quieten him. And at last she
managed to make him swallow a little hard bright blue seed called
Candar, which drives away fever and quiets dreams. But old Môha eyed him
angrily, and wanted to throw him out into the forest to die. "Who'd
sleep in a jacket that a gibbering Mulgar has died in?" she said.

When the next night was nearly gone, but before it was yet day, Nod
awoke, cool and clear, and stared into the musty darkness of the
Dragon-tree, wondering in vain where he was. Only one small spark of
light could he see--the red star Antares, that was now burning through a
little rift in the bark. He thought he heard a faint rustling of dry
leaves.

"Hey, there!" he called out. "Where is Nod?"

"Hold your tongue, thieving Mulgar," cried an angry voice, "and let
honest folk sleep in peace."

"If I could see," Nod answered weakly, "you wouldn't sleep much
to-night, honest or no."

"You can't see," answered the voice softly, "because, my man of bones,
you are dead and buried under the snow."

Nod grew cold. He pinched his legs; he opened and shut his mouth, and
took long, deep breaths; then he laughed. "It's none so bad, then, being
dead, Voice-of-Kindness," he said cheerfully, "if it weren't for this
sore shoulder of mine."

But to this the morose voice made no answer. Not yet, even, could Nod
remember all that had happened. "Hey, there!" he called out again
presently, "who buried me, then?"

"Buried you? Why, Mishcha and Môha, the old witch-hares, who found you
snuffling in the snow in your stolen sheep's-coat--Mishcha and Môha, who
wouldn't touch monkey-skin, not for a grove of green Candar-trees."

"I remember Môha," said Nod meekly, "a gentle and sleek, a very, very
handsome old Quatta. And is she dead, too?"

But again the sour voice made no reply.

"Once," said Nod, in a little while, "I had two brave brothers. I wonder
where those Mulla-mulgars are now?"

"He wonders," said the voice slowly--"he _wonders_! Frizzling,
frizzling, frizzling, my pretty Talk-by-Night, with seven smoking
Gelica-nuts for company on the spit."

At this Nod fell silent. He lay quaking in his warm, rustling bed, with
puckered forehead and restless eyes, wondering if the voice had told
him the truth, while daybreak stole abroad in the forest.

When dusk began to stir within the Dragon-tree, Mishcha awoke and came
and looked at him.

She hearkened at his ribs and mouth, and there seemed, Nod thought, a
little kindness in her ways. So he put out his shrunken hand, and said:
"Tell me truly, witch-hare. A voice in the night was merry with me, and
told me for pleasure that my brothers Thumb and Thimble were frizzling
on the cannibal Minimuls' spits. That is not true?"

"'One long and lean,'" said Mishcha, "'one fat and very heavy, and one
sly and tiny, a Nizza-neela.' Here's the Nizza-neela Mulla-mulgar; I
know nothing of the others."

"Ah, then," said Nod, starting up out of his bed, "I must be off to look
for them. Their Little Horses ran faster than mine. And mine, he was a
coward, and nibbled my sore shoulder to make me loose hold. But he could
not buck or scrape me off, witch-hare, tried he never so hard. I must be
off at once to look for my brothers. If they are dead, then I die too."

"Well, well," said the old hare, "it's sad to die, but it's sadder to
live alone. But tell me first one thing," she said. "Where have these
strange Mulgars come from in their rags and bravery?"

"Ohé," said Nod, and told her who they were.

"And tell me just one thing more," she said, when he had finished.
"Where, little Mulgar, is all this Magic I can smell?"

And at that question Nod thought he could never keep from laughing. But
he looked very solemn, and said: "There are three things, old hare, I
always carry about with me--one is my sheep's-jacket, one is hunger, and
the other is Magic; and the Magic just now is where my hunger is."

The old hare eyed him narrowly. "Well," she said, "wherever it is, if it
hadn't been for the Magic, little Mulgar, the Jaccatrays would have been
quarrelling over your bones. But there! remember old Mishcha sometimes
in your travels, who hated every Mulgar except just one little one!" She
bade him be very quiet, for her sister, after the night's talk, still
lay fast asleep, her eyes wide open, in the gloom.

And she put Ukka-nuts, and dried berries and fruits of many kinds, and
seven pepper-pods into his pockets, and buttoned the flaps. And she gave
him also some powdered physic-nuts, three bright-blue Candar-seeds, and
a little bunch of faded saffron-flower for a protection against the
teeth of the dreaded Coccadrillo. She tied up his shoulder with soft
clean moss, and fetched him a stout stick for cudgel out of the forest.
And then she hobbled out with him to see him on his way. Dawn lay rosy
and still upon the snow-laden branches.

"Where burns the Sulemnāgar, old hare?" said Nod, pretending utter
bravery. And the wise old Quatta hare pointed out to him where still the
Sulemnāgar gleamed faint and silver above the glistening trees.

So Nod thanked her, went forward a few paces, and stepped back to thank
her again; then set out truly and for good.

He walked very cautiously, spying about him as he went. The red sun
glinted on his cudgel. Once he saw a last night's leopard's track in the
snow. So he roved his eyes aloft as well as to left and right of him,
lest she should be lying in wait, crouched in the branches. A troop of
Skeetoes pelted him with Ukka-nuts. But these, as fast as they threw
them down, he gathered up and put into his bulging pockets, and waved
his cap at them for thanks. They gibbered and mocked at him, and flung
more nuts. "So long as it isn't stones, my long-tailed friends," he said
to himself, "I will not throw back."

After a while he came to where Cullum and Samarak grew so dense amid the
tree-trunks that he could scarcely walk upright. But he determined, as
his mother had bidden him, to keep from stooping on to his fours as long
as ever he could. Tumbling Numnuddies startled him, calling in the air.
And once a clouded vulture with wings at least six cudgels wide dropped
like a stone upon a leafless Bōōbab-branch, and watched him
gloatingly go limping by.

He sat down in his loneliness and rested, and nibbled one of Mishcha's
nuts. But try as he might, he could not swallow much. When once more he
set out, for a long way some skulking beast which he could not plainly
see stalked through the nodding grasses a few paces distant from him,
but side by side. He flourished his cudgel, and sang softly the
Mulla-mulgars' Journey-Song which Seelem had taught him long ago:

    "That one
     Alone
     Who's dared, and gone
     To seek the Magic Wonderstone,
     No fear,
     Or care,
     Or black despair,
     Shall heed until his journey's done.

    "Who knows
     Where blows
     The Mulgars' rose,
     In valleys 'neath unmelting snows--
     All secrets
     He
     Shall pierce and see,
     And walk unharmed where'er he goes."

Whether it was the Wonderstone under his breast-bone, on the sight of
his cudgel, or a distaste for his shrill voice and skinniness, Nod could
not tell, but in a little while, when he stopped a moment to peer
between the thick streamers of Samarak, the secret beast was gone. Day
drew on. He saw no tracks in the snow, except of wild pig and
long-snouted Brackanolls. The only sound he heard was the falling of
frosted clots of snow from the branches of the trees and the sad,
continuous "Oo-ee, oo-ee, oo-ee!" of the little rust-coloured Bittock
amid the sunlit snow. He did not dare now to rest, though his feet grew
more painful at every step, and his poisoned shoulder itched and ached.

He stumbled on, scarcely heeding where his footsteps were leading him.
Mulgar flies, speckled and humped, roused by the cloudless sun, buzzed
round his eyes and bit and stung him. And suddenly his heart stood still
at sight of seven amber and spotted beasts standing amid the grasses,
casting a league-long shadow with their necks--such beasts as he had
never seen before. But they were busy feeding, their heads and tiny
horns and lustrous eyes half hidden in the foliage of the branches. Nod
stared in fear and wonder, and passed their arbour very softly by.

Night began to fall, and the long-beaked bats to flit in their leathery
hoods, seeking small birds and beasts to quench their thirst. It seemed
now to Nod, his brave heart fallen, that he was utterly forsaken.
Darkness had always sent him scuttling home to the Portingal's hut when
he was little. How often his mother had told him that Nōōmanossi
with his luring harp-strings roamed these farther forests, and strange
beasts, too, that never show their faces to the sun! Worse still, as he
lifted his poor wrinkled forehead to the tree-tops to catch the last
beams of day, he felt a dreadful presence around him. Leopard it was
not, nor Gunga, nor Minimul. He stood still, his left hand resting on
its knuckles in the snow, his right clutching his cudgel, and leaning
his round ear sidelong, he listened and listened. He put down his
cudgel, and stood upright, his hands clasped behind his neck, and
lifting his flat nose, sniffed and sniffed again the scarcely-stirring
air. There was a smell, faint and strange. He turned as if to rush away,
to hide himself--anywhere away from this brooding, terrifying smell,
when, as if it were a little voice speaking beneath his ribs, he heard
the words: "Fear not, Ummanodda; press on, press on!" He took up his
cudgel with a groan, and limped quickly forward, and in an instant
before he could start back, before even he could cry out, he heard a
click, his foot slipped, out of the leaves whipped something smooth and
shining, and he was jerked into the air, caught, bound fast in a snare.

He writhed and kicked, he spat and hissed. But the more he struggled,
the tighter drew the cord round his neck. Everywhere, faint and
trembling, rose the strange and dreadful unknown smell. He hung quite
still. And as he dangled in pain, a night-wandering Bittock on a branch
above him called piteously: "Oo-ee, oo-ee, oo-ee!"

"Why do you mock me, my friend?" groaned Nod.

"Oo-ee, oo-ee, oo-ee!" wailed the Bittock, and hopping down slowly,
perched herself before his face. Her black eye gleamed. She clapped her
tiny wings above her head, and softly let them fold. "Oo-ee, oo-ee,
oo-ee!" she cried again.

Nod stared in a rage: "Oo-ee, oo-ee!" he mocked her feebly. "Who's
caught me in this trap? Why do you come mocking me, swinging here to
die? Put out my eyes, Bird of Sorrow. Nod's tired of being Nod."

The little bird seemed to listen, with rusty poll poked forward. She
puffed out her feathers, raised her pointed bill, and piercingly into
the shadows rang out her trembling voice again. "Oo-ee, oo-ee, oo-ee!"
she sang, spread her wings, and left Nod quite alone.

His thong twitched softly. He shut his eyes. And once again, borne on
the faint cold wind, that smell came sluggishly to his nostrils. His
fears boiled up. His hair grew wet on his head. And suddenly he heard a
distant footfall. Nearer and nearer--not panther's, nor Gunga's, nor
Ephelanto's. And then some ancient voice whispered in his memory:
"Oomgar, Oomgar!" Man!




[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX


There was only the last of day in the forest. But Nod, dangling in
terror, could clearly see the Oomgar peering at him from beneath the
unstirring branches--his colourless skin, his long yellow hair, his
musket, his fixed, glittering eyes. And there came suddenly a voice out
of the Oomgar, like none the little Mulgar had ever heard in his life
before. Nod screamed and gnashed and kicked. But it was in vain. It only
noosed him tighter.

"So, so, then; softly, now, softly!" said the strange clear voice. The
Oomgar caught up the slack end of the noose and wound it deftly around
him, binding him hand and foot together. Then he took a long steel knife
from his breeches pocket, cut the cord round Nod's neck, and let him
drop heavily to the ground. "_Poor_ little Pongo! poor leetle Pongo!" he
said craftily, and cautiously stooped to pick him up.

Nod could not see for rage and fear. He drew back his head, and with
all his strength fixed his teeth in that white terrible thumb. The
Oomgar sucked in his breath with the pain, and, catching up the little
Mulgar's own cudgel that lay in the snow, rapped him angrily on the
head. After that Nod struggled no more. A thick piece of cloth was tied
fast round his jaws. The Oomgar slipped the barrel of his musket through
the Cullum-rope, lifted the little Mulgar on to his back, and strode off
with him through the darkening forest.

They came out after a while from among the grasses, vines, and
undergrowth. The Oomgar climbed heavily up a rocky slope, trudged on
over an open and level space of snow, across an icy yet faintly stirring
stream, and came at length to a low wooden house drifted deep in snow,
in front of which a big fire was burning, showering up sparks into the
starry sky. Here the Oomgar stooped and tumbled Nod over his shoulder
into the snow at a little distance from the fire. He bent his head to
the flames, and examined his bitten thumb, rubbed the blood off with a
handful of snow, sucked the wound, bound it roughly with a strip of blue
cloth, and tied the bandage in a knot with his teeth. This done, making
a strange noise with his lips like the hissing of sap from a green
stick, he began plucking off the wing and tail feathers of a large grey
bird. This he packed in leaves, and uncovering a little hole beneath the
embers, raked it out, and pushed the carcass in to roast.

He squinnied narrowly over his shoulder a moment, then went into his hut
and brought out a cooking-pot, which he filled with water from the
stream, and put into it a few mouse-coloured roots called Kiddals, which
in flavour resemble an artichoke, and are very wholesome, even when
cold. He hung his cooking-pot over the fire on three sticks laid
crosswise. Then he sat down and cleaned his musket while his supper was
cooking.

All this Nod watched without stirring, almost without winking, till at
last the Oomgar, with a grunt, put down his gun, and came near and stood
over him, staring down with a crooked smile on his mouth, between his
yellow hair and the short, ragged beard beneath. He held out his
bandaged thumb. "There, little master," he said coaxingly, "have another
taste; though I warn ye," he added, wagging his head, "it'll be your
werry last." Nod's restless hazel eyes glanced to and fro above the
stifling cloth wound round his mouth. He felt sullen and ashamed. How
his brother Thimble would have scoffed to see him now, caught like a
sucking-pig in a snare!

The Oomgar smiled again. "Why, he's nowt but skin and bone, he is;
shivering in his breeches and all. Lookee here, now, Master Pongo, or
whatsomedever name you goes by, here's one more chance for ye." He took
out his knife and slit off the gag round Nod's mouth, and loosened the
cord a little. Nod did not stir.

"And who's to wonder?" said the Oomgar, watching him. He began warily
scratching the little Mulgar's head above the parting. "It was a cruel
hard rap, my son--a cruel hard rap, I don't gainsay ye; but, then, you
must take Andy's word for it, they was cruel sharp teeth."

Nod saw him looking curiously at his sheep's-jacket, and, thinking he
would show this strange being that Mulla-mulgars, too, can understand,
he sidled his hand gently and heedfully into his pocket and fetched out
one of the Ukka-nuts that old Mishcha had given him.

At that the Oomgar burst out laughing. "Brayvo!" he shouted; "that's
mother-English, that is! Now we's beginning to unnerstand one another."
He poured a little hot water out of his cooking-pot into a platter and
put it down in the snow. Nod sniffed it doubtfully. It smelt sweet and
earthy of the root simmering in it. But he raised the platter of water
slowly with his loosened hands, cooled it with blowing, and supped it up
greedily, for he was very thirsty.

The Oomgar watched him with an astonished countenance. "Saints save us!"
he muttered, "he drinks like a Christian!"

Nod wriggled his mouth, and imitated the sound as best he could.
"Krisshun, Krisshun," he grunted.

The stooping Oomgar stared across the fire at Nod in the shadow as a man
stares towards a strange and formidable shape in the dark. "Saints save
us!" he whispered again, crossing himself, and sat down on his log.

He scraped back the embers and stripped the burnt skin and frizzled
feathers off his roasted bird, stuck a wooden prong into a Kiddal, and,
with a mouthful of bird and a mouthful of Kiddal, set heartily to his
supper. When he had eaten his fill, he heaped up the fire with green
wood, tied Nod to a thick stake of his hut, so that he could lie in
comfort of the fire and to windward of its smoke; then, with a tossed-up
glance at the starry and cloudless vault of the sky, he went whistling
into the hut and noisily barred the door.

Softly crooning to himself in his sorrow and loneliness, Nod lay long
awake. Of a sudden he would sit up, trembling, to glance as if from a
dream about him, then in a little while would lie down quiet again. At
last, with hands over his face and feet curled up towards the fire, he
fell fast asleep.

When Nod woke the next morning the Oomgar was already abroad, and busy
over his breakfast. The sun burned clear in the dark blue sky. Nod
opened his eyes and watched the Oomgar without stirring. He stood in
height by more than a hand's breadth taller than the Gunga-mulgar. But
he was much leaner. The Gunga's horny knuckles had all but brushed the
ground when he stood, stooping and glowering, on legs crooked and
shapeless as wood. The Oomgar's arms reached only midway to his knees;
he walked straight as a palm-tree, without stooping, and no black,
cringing cunning nor bloodshot ferocity darkened his face. His hair
dangled beaming in the sun about his clear skin. His hands were only
faintly haired. And he wore a kind of loose jacket or jerkin, made of
the inner bark of the Juzanda-tree (which is of finer texture than the
Mulgars' cloth), rough breeches of buffskin, and monstrous boots. But
most Nod watched flinchingly the Oomgar's light blue eyes, hard as ice,
yet like nothing for strangeness Nod had ever seen in his life before,
nor dreamed there was. But every time they wheeled beneath their lids
piercingly towards him he closed his own, and feigned to be asleep.

At last, feeling thirsty, he wriggled up and crawled to the dish, which
still lay icy in the snow, and raised it with both hands as far as his
manacles would serve, and thrust it out empty towards the Oomgar.

The Oomgar made Nod a great smiling bow over the fire in answer, and
filled it with water. Then, breaking off a piece of his smoking flesh,
he flung it to the Mulgar in the snow. But Nod would not so much as
stoop to smell it. He gravely shook his head, thrust in his fingers, and
drew an Ukka-nut out of his pocket. "And who's to blame ye?" said the
Oomgar cheerfully. "It's just the tale of Jack Sprat, my son, over
again; only your little fancy's neether lean nor fat, but monkey-nuts!"
He got up, and, screening his eyes from the sun, looked around him.

Then Nod looked, too. He saw that the Oomgar had built his hut near the
edge of a kind of shelving rock, which sloped down softly to a cliff or
gully. A little half-frozen stream flowed gleaming under the sun between
its snowy banks, to tumble wildly over the edge of the cliff in blazing
and frozen spray. Beyond the cliff stretched the azure and towering
forests of Munza, immeasurable, league on league, flashing beneath the
whole arch of the sky, capped and mantled and festooned with snow. Near
by grew only thin grasses and bushes of thorn, except that at the
southern edge of the steep rose up a little company or grove of
Ukka-nuts and Ollacondas. Toward these strode off the Oomgar, with a
thick billet of wood in his hand. When he reached them, he stood
underneath, and flung up his billet into the tree, just as Nod himself
had often done, and soon fetched down two or three fine clusters of
Ukka-nuts. These he brought back with him, and held some out to the
quiet little Mulgar.

"There, my son," he said, "them's for pax, which means peace, you
unnerstand. I'm not afeerd of you, nor you isn't afeerd of me. All's
spliced and shipshape." So there they sat beneath the blazing sun, the
dazzling snow all round them, the Oomgar munching his broiled flesh, and
staring over the distant forest, Nod busily cracking his Ukka-nuts, and
peeling out the soft, milky, quincey kernel. Nod scarcely took his
bewitched eyes from the Oomgar's face, and the longer he looked at him,
the less he feared him. All creatures else he had ever seen seemed dark
and cloudy by comparison. The Oomgar's face was strange and fair, like
the shining of a flame.

"Now, see here, my son," said the Oomgar suddenly, when, after finishing
his breakfast, he had sat brooding for some time: "I go there--_there_,"
he repeated, pointing with his hand across the stream; "and Monkey
Pongo, he stay here--_here_," he repeated, pointing to the hut. "Now,
s'posin' Andy Battle, which is _me_"--he bent himself towards Nod and
grinned--"s'posin' Andy Battle looses off that rope's end a little more,
will Master Pongo keep out of mischief, eh?"

Nod tried hard to understand, and looked as wise as ever he could. "Ulla
Mulgar majubba; zinglee Oomgar," he said.

Battle burst out laughing. "Ugga, nugga, jugga, jingles! That's
it--that's the werry thing," he said.

Nod looked up softly without fear, and grinned.

"He knows, by gum!" said Battle. "There be more wits in that leetle
hairy cranny than in a shipload of commodores." He got up and loosened
the rope round Nod's neck. "It's only just this," he said. "Andy Battle
isn't turned cannibal yet--neither for white, black, nor monkey-meat. I
wouldn't eat you, my son, not if they made me King of England
to-morrow, which isn't likely to be, by the look of the weather, so
_don't ee have no meddlin' with the fire_!"

"Middlinooiddyvire," said Nod, mimicking him softly.

And at that Battle burst into such a roar of laughter the hut shook. He
filled Nod's platter with water, and gave him the rest of the Ukka-nuts.
He went into the hut and fetched musket, powder, and bullets. He put a
thick-peaked hat on his head, then, with his musket over his shoulder,
he nodded handsomely at the little blinking Mulgar, and off he went.

Nod watched him stride away. With a hop, skip, and a jump he crashed
across the frozen water, and soon disappeared down the steep path that
led into the forest. When he was out of sight, Nod lay down in the
shadow of the log-hut. He felt a strange comfort, as if there was
nothing in all Munza-mulgar to be afraid of. His rage and sullenness
were gone. He would rest here awhile with this Oomgar, if he were as
kind as he seemed to be, and try to understand what he said. Then, when
his feet were healed of their sores and blains, and his shoulder was
quite whole again, he would set off once more after his brothers.

All the next day, and the day after that, Nod sat patient and still,
tethered with a long cord round his neck to the Oomgar's hut. When
Battle spoke to him he listened gravely. When he laughed and showed his
teeth, Nod showed his cheerfully, too. And when Battle sat silent and
cast down in thought, Nod pretended to be unspeakably busy over his
nuts.

And soon the sailor found himself beginning to look forward to seeing
the hairy face peering calmly out of the sheep's-jacket on his return
from his hunting. On the third evening, when, after a long absence, he
came home, tired out and heavy-laden, with a little sharp-horned
Impolanca-calf and a great frost-blackened bunch of Nanoes, he took off
Nod's halter altogether and set him free.

"There!" said he; "we're messmates now, Master Pongo. Andy Battle's had
a taste of slavery himself, and it isn't reasonable, my son. It frets in
like rusty iron, my son; and Andy's supped his fill of it. I takes to
your company wonnerful well, and if you takes to mine, then that's
plain-sailing, says I. But if them apes and monkeys over yonder are more
to your liking than a shipwrecked sailor, who's to blame ye? Every man
to his own, says I; breeches to breeches, and bare to bare. The werry
first thing is for me and you to unnerstand one another."

Nod listened gravely to all this talk, and caught the sailor's meaning,
what with a word here, a nod, a wink, or a smile there, and the jerk of
a great thumb.

"But as for Andy Battle," went on the sailor, "he never were much struck
at a foreign lingo. So, says I, Andy shall learn Master Pongo his'n. And
here goes! That," said he, holding up a great piece of meat on his
knife--"that's _meat_."

"'Zmeat--ugh!" said Nod, with a shudder.

"And this here's nuts," said Battle.

"'Znuts!" repeated Nod, rubbing his stomach.

Battle rapped on his log. "Excellentissimo!" he said. "He's a scholard
born. Now, monkeys like you," he went on, looking into Nod's face, "if
I make no mistake, the blackamoors calls 'Pongoes.'"

Nod shook his head.

"No? 'Njekkoes, then," said the sailor.

Nod shook his head again. "Me Mulla-mulgar, Pongo--Jecco"--he shook Ins
head vehemently--"me Mulla-mulgar Ummanodda Nizza-neela."

The Oomgar laughed aloud. "Axing your pardon, then, Master Noddle
Ebenezer, mine's Battle--Andrew, as which is Andy, Battle."

"Whizzizandy--Baffle," said Nod, with a jerk.

"Fam_ous_!" said the sailor. "Us was a downright dunce to you, my son.
Now, then, hoise anchor, and pipe up! Andy Battle is an Englishman; hip,
hooray! Andy Battle----"

"'Andy Baffle----'"

"'Is an----'"

"'Izzn----'"

"'Is an Englishman.'"

"'Izziningulissmum,'" said Nod very slowly.

"'Hip, hooray!'" bawled Battle.

"'Ippooray!" squealed Nod. And Battle rocked to and fro on his log with
laughter.

"That's downright rich, my son, that is! 'Izzuninglushum!' As sure as
ever mariners was born to be drownded,

    "We'll sail away, o'er the deep blue say,
    And to old England we'll make our way."

A piece of silver for a paw-shake, and two for a good-e'en. Us 'll make
a fortune, you and me, and go and live in a snug little cottage with
six palm-trees and a blackamoor down Ippleby way. Andrew Battle, knight
and squire, and Jack Sprat, Prince of Pongo-land. Ay, and the King shall
come to sup wi' us, comfortable-like, 'twixt you and me, and drink
hisself thirsty out of a golden mug."

And so it went on. Every day Battle taught Nod new words. And soon he
could say a few simple things in his Mulgar-English, and begin to make
himself understood. Battle taught him also to cook his meat for him,
though Nod would never taste of it himself. And Nod, too, out of Sudd
and Mambel-berries and Nanoes and whatever other dried and frosted
fruits Battle brought home, made monkey-bread and a kind of porridge,
which Battle at first tasted with caution, but at last came to eat with
relish.

The sailor stitched his friend up a jacket of Juzanda cloth, with
Bamba-shells for buttons, and breeches of buff-skin. These Nod dyed dark
blue in patches, for his own pleasure, with leaves, as Battle directed
him. Battle made him also a pair of shoes of rhinoceros-skin, nearly
three inches thick, on which Nod would go sliding and tumbling on the
ice, and a cap of needlework and peacocks' feathers, just as in his
dream.

There were many things in Battle's hut gathered together for traffic and
pleasure in his journey: a great necklace of Gunga's or Pongo's teeth; a
bagful of Cassary beads, which change colour with the hour, a bolt-eyed
Joojoo head, a bird-billed throwing-knife, also beads of Estridges'
eggs, as large as a small melon. There was also, what Battle cherished
very carefully, a little fat book of 566 pages and nine woodcuts that
his mother had given him before setting out on his hapless voyagings,
with a tongue or clasp of brass to keep it together. Moreover, Battle
gave Nod a piece of looking-glass, the like of which he had never seen
before. And the little Mulgar would often sit sorrowfully talking to his
image in the glass, and bid the face that there answered his own be off
and find his brothers. And Nod, in return, gave Battle for a keepsake
the little Portingal's left-thumb knuckle-bone and half the faded
Coccadrillo saffron which old Mishcha had given to him.

Of an evening these castaways had music for their company--a bell of
copper that rang marvellously clear across the frosty air, and would
bring multitudes of night-birds hovering and crying over the hut in
perplexity at the sweet and hollow sound. And besides the bell, Battle
had a cittern, or lute, made of a gourd, with a Jugga-wood neck like a
fiddle. Stretched and pegged this was, with twangling strings made of a
climbing root that grows in the denser forests, and bears a flower
lovelier than any to be seen on earth beside. With Battle thrumming on
this old crowd or lute, Nod danced many a staggering hornpipe and
Mulgar-jig. Moreover, Battle had taught himself to pick out a melody or
two. So, then, they would dance and sing songs together--"Never, tir'd
Sailour," "The Three Cherrie-trees," "Who's seene my Deere with Cheekes
so redde?" and many another.

Battle's voice was loud and great; Nod's was very changeable. For the
upper notes of his singing were shrill and trembling, and so the best
part of his songs would go; but when they dipped towards the bass, then
his notes burst out so sudden and powerful, it might be supposed four
men's voices had taken up the melody where a boy's had ceased. It
pleased Battle mightily, this night-music--music of all the kinds they
knew, white man's, Jaqqua-music, Nugga-music, and Mulla-mulgars'. Nod,
too, often droned to the sailor, as time went on, the evening song to
Tishnar that his father had taught him, until at last the sailor himself
grew familiar with the sound, and learned the way the notes went. And
sometimes Battle would sit and, singing solemnly, almost as if a little
forlornly, through his nose, would join in too. And sometimes to see
this small monkey perched up with head in air, he could scarce refrain
his laughter, though he always kept a straight face as kindly as with a
child.

But the leopards and other prowling beasts, when they heard the sound of
their strings and music, went mewing and fretting; and many a great
python and ash-scaled poison-snake would rear its head out of its long
sleep and sway with flickering tongue in time to the noisy echoes from
the rocky and firelit shelf above. Even the Jack-Alls and Jaccatrays
squatted whimpering in their bands to listen, and would break when all
was silent into such a doleful and dismal chorus that it seemed to shake
the stars.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER X


It was many a day after Nod had been taken in the sailor's snare, and
one very snowy, when the little Mulgar, looking up over his cooking, saw
Battle come limping white and blood-beslobbered across the frozen stream
towards home. He carried nothing except his gun, neither beast nor bird.
He stumbled over the ice, and walked crazily. And when he reached the
fire, he just tumbled his musket against a log and sat himself down
heavily, holding his head in his hands, with a sighing groan. Now, this
was the fifth day or more that Battle had gone out and returned without
meat, and Nod, in his vanity, thought the sailor was beginning to weary
of flesh, and to take pleasure only in nuts and fruit, as the
Mulla-mulgars do. But when Battle had dried up the deep scratch on his
neck, and eaten a morsel or two of Nod's fresh-baked Nano-cake, he told
him of his doings.

Nod could even now, of course, only understand a little here and there
of what Battle said. But he twisted out enough words to learn that the
sailor was astonished and perplexed at finding such a scarcity of game,
howsoever far or cautiously he roamed in search of it.

"Ay, and maybe that's no great wonder, neether, what with this
everlasting snow and all. But tell me this, Nod Mulgar: Why does,
whenever I spies a fine fat four-legged breakfast or two-winged supper
feeding within comfortable musket-shot--why does a howl like a
M'keesoe's, dismal and devilish, break out not fifteen paces off, and
scare away every living creature for leagues around? Why does leopards
and Jack-Alls and Jaccatrays swarm round Andy Battle when he goes
a-walking, thick as cats round cream? They've scotched me this once, my
son--an old she-leopard, black as pitch out of an Ollacondy. And I could
have staked a ransom I cast my eye over every bough. Next time who's to
know what may happen? Nizza-neela will go on cooking his little hot
niminy-cakes, and wait and wait--only for bones--only for Battle's
bones, Mulgar _mio_. What I says is this-how: leopards and Jaccatrays,
from being what they once was, two or three, one to-day and three
to-morrow, now lurks everywhere, looking me in the face as bold as
brass, and sniffling at my very musket. But, there! that's all
plain-sailing. What Andy wants to know for sartin sure is: what beast it
is grinds out so close against his ear that unearthly human howling?
'Twixt me and you and Lord Makellacolongee, it criddles my very blood to
hear it. My finger begins tapping on the musket-trigger like hail on a
millpond."

Nod listened, puckered and intent, and looked a good deal wiser than he
was. And when supper was done he fetched out the thick rhinoceros-shoes
which Battle had made him, as if to go disporting himself as usual on
the ice. But, instead of this, he hid them behind a hummock of snow,
and, crossing over the stream, crept to the edge of the snowy shelf, and
sat under an Exxswixxia-bush, gazing down into the gloom, silently
watching and listening. He heard soft, furtive calls, whimperings. A
startled bird flew up on beating wings, and far and near the Jack-Alls
were hollowly barking one to another in their hunting-bands. But he saw
no leopards nor heard any voice or sound he knew no reason for, or had
not heard before. Perhaps, he thought, his dull wits had misunderstood
the Oomgar's talk.

He was just about to turn away, when he heard a little call, often
repeated, "Chikka, chikka," which means in Munza-mulgar, "Bide here," or
"Wait awhile." And there, stealing up from under the longer grasses,
came who but Mishcha, the old witch-hare. But very slowly and cautiously
she came, pretending that she was searching out what poor fare she could
find in the dismal snow.

When she was come close, she whispered: "Move not; stir not a finger,
Mulla-mulgar; speak to me as I am. I have a secret thing to say to you.
These seven long frozen evenings have I come fretting abroad in my
forest and watched and watched, and chikka'd and chikka'd, but you have
not come. Why, O Prince of Tishnar, do you linger here with this
flesh-eating Oomgar, whose gun barks Nōōmanossi all day long? Why
do you think no more of your brothers and of the distant valleys?"

Nod crouched in silence a little while, twitching his small brows. "But
this Oomgar took me in a snare," he said at last. "And he has fed me,
and been like my own father Seelem come again to me, and we are
friends--'messimuts,' old hare. Besides, I wait only until I am healed
of my blains and thorns, and my shoulder is quite whole again. Then I
go. But even then, why has the old Queen duatta come louping through
Munza all these seven evenings past, only to tell me that?"

Mishcha eyed him silently with her whitening eyes. "Not so blind am I
yet, little Mulgar, as not to creep and creep a league for the sake of a
friend. Be off to-morrow, Nizza-neela! What knows an Oomgar of
friendship? _That_ brings only the last sleep."

"I mind not the last sleep, old hare," said Nod in his vanity. "Did I
fear it when half-frozen in the snow? Besides, my friend, the Oomgar,
whose name is Battle, he will guard me."

Mishcha crept nearer. "Has not the little Mulla-mulgar, then, heard
Immanâla's hunting-cry?"

Now, Immanâla in Munza means, as it were, unstoried, nameless, unknown,
darkness, secrecy. All these the word means. Night is Immanâla to
Munza-mulgar. So is sorcery. So, too, is the dark journey to death or
the Third Sleep. And this _Beast_ they name Immanâla because it comes of
no other beast that is known, has no likeness to any. Child of nothing,
wits of all things, ravenous yet hungerless, she lures, lures, and if
she die at all, dies alone. By some it is said that this Immanâla is the
servant of Nōōmanossi, and has as many lives as his white
resting-tree has branches. And so she is born again to haunt and raven
and poison Munza with cruelty and strife. All this Nod had heard from
his father Seelem, and his skin crept at sound of the name. But he
pretended he felt no fear.

"Who is this Immanâla, the Nameless?" he scoffed softly, "that a
Mulla-mulgar should heed her yapping (uggagugga)?"

"Ah," said the old hare, "he boasts best who boasts in safety. Mishcha,
little Mulgar, has met the Nameless face to face, and when I hear her
hunting-cry I do not make merry. How could she all these days have given
ear to the Oomgar's gun in the forest, and make no sign--she who has for
her servants leopards and Jaccatrays of many years' hunting? Mark this,
too," said Mishcha, "if the little Mulgar were not the chosen of
Tishnar, his Oomgar would long ago have been nothing but a few picked
bones."

The old hare touched him with her long-clawed foot, and gazed earnestly
into his face with her half-blind, whitening eyes. "Yes, Mulgar," she
said at last, whispering, "your brothers that rode on the little Horses
of Tishnar are none so far away. 'Why,' say they to each other, roosting
half-frozen in their tree-huts--'why does Ummanodda betray all
Munza-mulgar to the Oomgar's gun? He is no child of Royal Seelem's
now.'"

Nod's heart stood still to hear again of his brothers, and that they
were so near. And Mishcha promised if he would abandon the Oomgar, she
would lead him to them. Nod gazed long into the gloom before he sadly
answered:

"I cannot leave my master," he said, "who has fed and befriended me. I
cannot leave him to be torn in pieces by this Beast of Shadows. He is
wise--oh, he is wise! He was born to stand upright. He fears not any
shadow. He walks with Nōōmas beneath every tree. He kills, old
Mishcha--that I know well--and feeds like a glutton on flesh. But a
she-leopard in one moon eats as many of the Munza-mulgars as she has
roses on her skin. As for the Nameless, my father Seelem told me many a
time of _her_ thirsty tongue."

Then Mishcha whispered warily in Nod's ear in the shadow of the
thorn-bush beneath which they sat, turning her staring stone-coloured
eyes this way, that way. "If the Oomgar were safe from her," she said,
scarcely opening her thin lips above the lean curved teeth, "would
_then_ the little Mulgar go?"

Nod laughed. "Then would I go on all fours, O Mishcha, for I am weary of
waiting and being far from my brothers, Thumb and Thimble. Then would I
go at once if I could leave the Oomgar quietly to his hunting, and safe
from this Shadow-beast and from more than three lean hunting leopards on
the Ollaconda boughs at one time."

Then Mishcha told him what he should do. And Nod listened, shivering, in
part for the cold, and in part for dread of what she was saying. "There
be three things, Nizza-neela," she said, when she had told him all her
stratagem--"there be three things even a Mulla-mulgar must have who
fights with Immanâla, Queen of Shadows: he must have Magic, he must have
cunning, and he must have courage. Oh, little Prince of Tishnar, should
I have physicked you and saved you from the sooty spits of the Minimuls
if you had been neither wise nor brave?"

And Nod promised by his Wonderstone to do all that she had bidden him.
And she crept soundlessly back into the gloom of the forest. Nod
himself quickly hobbled home, took up his sliding-shoes again, and
returned to the little hut and the Oomgar's red fire.

Battle sat there, stooping in the light of the rising moon and the ruddy
glow over his little book. But he held it for memory's sake rather than
to read in it. His head was jerking in sleep when Nod sat himself down
by the fire, and the little Mulgar could think quietly of all that the
old hare had told him. He half shut his eyes, watching his slow, curious
Mulgar thoughts creep in and out. And while he sat there, lonely and
wretched, struggling between love for his brothers and for the Oomgar,
he heard a small clear voice within him speaking that said: "Courage,
Prince Ummanodda! Tishnar is faithful to the faithful. Who is this
Nameless to set snares against her chosen? Fear not, Nizza-neela; all
will be well!" Thus it seemed to Nod the inward voice was saying to him,
and he took comfort. He would tell the poor sailor, perhaps, part of
what he feared and knew, and with Tishnar to help him would seek out
this Immanâla and meet her face to face.

Night rode in starry darkness above the great black forest. The logs
burned low. Close before his fire sat Battle, his chin on his breast,
his yellow-haired head rolling from side to side in his sleep. Thin
clear flames, blue and sulphur, floated along the logs, and lit up his
fast-shut eyes. Nod sat with his little chops in his hairy hands
watching the sailor. Sometimes a solitary beast roared, or a night-bird
squalled out of the gloom. At last the little book fell out of Battle's
sleep-loosened fingers. He started, raised his head, and stared into the
darkness, listening to howl answering to howl, shrill cry to distant
cry. He yawned, showing all his small white teeth.

"Your friends are uncommon fidgety to-night, Nod Mulgar," he said.

Nod got up and threw more wood on the glowing fire. "Not Mulla-mulgar's
friends. Nod's friends not hate Oomgar." Up sprang the flames, hissing
and crackling.

The sailor grinned. "Lor' bless ye, my son; you talks wonnerful
hoity-toity; but in _my_ country they would clap ye into a cage."

"Cage?" said Nod.

"Ay, in a stinking cage, with iron bars, for the rabble to jeer at. What
would the monkeys do with a white man, an Oomgar, if they cotched 'n?"

"In my father Seelem's hut over there," said Nod, waving his long hand
towards the Sulemnāgar, "Oomgar's bones hanged click, click, click in
the wind."

Battle stared. "They hates us, eh? Picks us clean!"

Nod looked at him gravely. "Mulla-mulgar--me--not hate Oomgar. All
Munza"--he lifted his brows--"ay! he kill and eat, eat, eat, same as
leopard, same as Jaccatray."

Battle frowned. "It's tit for tat, my son. I kills Roses, or Roses kills
me. Not a Jack-All that howls moon up over yonder that wouldn't say
grace for a picking. But apes and monkeys, no; not even a warty old
drumming Pongo that's twice as ugly as his own shadow in the glass. I
never did burn powder 'gainst a monkey yet. What's more," said Battle,
"who's to know but we was all what you calls Oomgars once? Good as.
You've just come down in the world, that's all. And who's to blame ye?
No barbers, no ships, no larnin', no nothing. Breeches?--One pair, my
son, to half a million, as far as Andy ever set eyes on. Maybe you come
from that wicked King Pharaoh over in Egypt there. Maybe you was one of
the plagues, and scuttled off with all the fleas." He grinned
cheerfully. Nod watched his changing face, but what he said now he could
not understand.

"There's just one thing, Master Mulgar," went on Battle solemnly. "Kill
or not kill, hairy as hairy, or bald as a round-shot, God made us every
one. And speakin' comfortable-like, 'twixt you and me, just as my old
mother taught me years gone by, I planks me down on my knees like any
babby this very hour gone by, while you was sliding in your shoes, and
said me prayers out loud. I'm getting mortal sick of being lonesome. Not
that I blames _you_, my son. You're better company than fifty million
parakeets, and seven-and-seventy Mullagoes of blackamoors."

Nod stared gravely. "Oomgar talk; Nod unnerstand--no." He sorrowfully
shook his head.

"My case all over," said Battle. "Andy unnerstand--no. But there, we'll
off to England, my son, soon as ever this mortal frost breaks. Years and
years have I been in this here dismal Munza. Man-eaters and Ephelantoes,
Portingals and blackamoors, chased and harassed up and down, and never a
spark of frost seen, unless on the Snowy Mountains. What wouldn't I give
for a sight of Plymouth now!"

He rose and stretched himself. Facing him, across the unstirring
darkness of the forest shone palely the great new-risen moon. "'Hi, hi,
up she rises,'" said Battle, staring over. "'But what's to be done with
a shipwrecked sailor?' Nobody knows, but who can't tell us. Now, just
one stave, Nod Mulgar, afore we both turns in. Give us 'Cherry-trees.'
No, maybe I'll pipe ye one of Andy's Own, and you shall jine in, same as
t'other." Nod climbed up and stood on his log, his hands clasped behind
his neck, and stamped softly with his feet in time, while Battle, after
tuning up his great gourd--or Juddie, as he called it--plucked the
sounding strings. And soon the Oomgar's voice burst out so loud and
fearless that the prowling panthers paused with cowering head and
twitching ears, and the Jaccatrays out of the shadows lifted their
cringing eyes up to the moon, dolefully listening. And when the last two
lines of each verse had been sung, Battle plucked more loudly at his
strings, and Nod joined in.

    "Once and there was a young sailor, yeo ho!
       And he sailèd out over the say
     For the isles where pink coral and palm-branches blow,
       And the fire-flies turn night into day,
                 Yeo ho!
       And the fire-flies turn night into day.

    "But the _Dolphin_ went down in a tempest, yeo ho!
       And with three forsook sailors ashore,
     The Portingals took him where sugar-canes grow,
       Their slave for to be evermore,
                 Yeo ho!
       Their slave for to be evermore.

    "With his musket for mother and brother, yeo ho!
       He warred wi' the Cannibals drear,
     In forests where panthers pad soft to and fro,
       And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear
                 Yeo ho!
       And the Pongo shakes noonday with fear.

    "Now lean with long travail, all wasted with woe,
       With a monkey for messmate and friend,
     He sits 'neath the Cross in the cankering snow,
       And waits for his sorrowful end,
                 Yeo ho!
       And waits for his sorrowful end."

    [Illustration: NOD DANCED THE JAQQUAS' WAR-DANCE, ... STOOPING AND
    CROOKED "WRIGGLE AND STAMP."]

This song sung, Nod danced the Jaqquas' war-dance, which Battle had
taught him, stooping and crooked, "wriggle and stamp," gnashing his
teeth, waving a club--which waving, indeed, always waved Nod sprawling
off his log before long, and set Battle rolling with laughter, and ended
the dance.

That dance danced, they sat quiet awhile, Battle softly, very softly,
thrumming on his Juddie, gazing into the fire. And suddenly in the
silence, out of the vast blackness of the moonlit leagues beneath them,
broke a strange and dismal cry. It rose lone and hollow, and yet it
seemed with its sound to fill the whole enormous bowl of star-bedazzling
sky above the forest. Then down it lingeringly fell, note by note,
wailing and menacing, an answering song of hatred against the solitary
Oomgar and his gun.

Battle caught up his musket and stood erect, facing with scowling eyes
the vast silence of the forest. And instantly from far and near,
solitary and in hunting-bands, deep and shrill, every beast that slinks
and lies in wait beneath the moon broke into its hunting-cry.

Battle stood listening with a savage grin on his face, until the last
echo had died away. Then, throwing down his musket, he hitched up the
cloth bandage on his shoulder, lifted his great Juddie, and strode out
from the fire a few paces till he stood black and solitary in the
moonlight of the snow. And he plucked the girding strings and roared out
with all his lungs his mocking answer:

    "Voice without a body,
     Panther of black Roses,
     Jack-Alls fat on icicles,
     Ephelanto, Aligatha,
     Zevvera and Jaccatray,
     Unicorn and River-horse;
             Ho, ho, ho!
     Here's Andy Battle,
     Waiting for the enemy!

    "Imbe Calandola,
     M'keesso and Quesanga,
     Dondo and Sharammba,
     Pongo and Enjekko,
     Millions of monkeys,
     Rattlesnake and scorpion,
     Swamp and death and shadow;
             Ho, ho, ho!
     Come on, all of ye,
     Here's Andy Battle,
     Waiting and--alone!"

He swept his great scarred thumb over the strings with a resounding
flourish, and burst into a laugh. Then he turned his back on the
unanswering forest, and sat down by the fire again, wiping the sweat
from his face and combing out his tangled beard. Nod drew a little away
from the fire, and sat softly watching him. The Oomgar was muttering
with wide-open lids. He snatched up a lump of the cold Mulgar-bread that
Nod had cooked for his supper, and gnawed it with twitching fingers. He
glanced over it with bright blue glittering eyes at his little
hunched-up friend.

"Don't you have no shadow of fear, my son. If they come, come they must.
Just you skip off into the forest with your courage where your tail
ought to be. I care not a pinch of powder for them or'nery beasts. It's
that there Shadowlegs that beats me with his mewling. I've heard it down
on the coast; I've heard it with the Portingals; I've heard it with the
Andalambandoes; I've heard it wake and sleep. But witch-beast or no
witch-beast, and every skulk-by-night that creeps on claws, I'll win
home yet!" He kicked a few loose smoking logs into the blaze. "More
fire, my son! I like a light to fight by when fighting comes."

The darkness was clear as glass. The sky seemed shaken as if with
fire-flies. Not a sound stirred now, not even a hovering wing. Nod
heaped high the huge fire, and followed the Oomgar into his hut.

But not to sleep. He crouched on his snug dry bed of moss, and waited
patiently till Battle's snores rose slow and mournful beneath the
snow-piled roof. Then very quickly he put on his sheep's-coat over his
Juzanda jacket and breeches. He crawled out, and lifted down with both
hands the heavy bar of the door, and stole out into the moonlight again.
He thrust his puckered hand under his jacket, and touched his skinny
breast-bone, beneath which, ever since the little Horse of Tishnar had
toppled him into the snow, he had felt the slumbering Wonderstone
strangely burning. And, as if even Oomgar magic, too, might help him, he
hobbled back into the hut and put Battle's little dog's-eared book into
his pocket. Then, before his heart could fail him, he ran out as fast as
his fours could carry him to where he had heard rise up in the night the
Hunting-Song of Immanâla.

On the extreme verge of the steep, opposite Battle's hut, stood a
solitary flat-headed rock beside the frozen stream. Here the water burst
in a blaze of moonlight into a cascade of icicles and foam. Nod stood
there in the rock's shadow awhile, looking down into the forest. And as
if a little cloud had come upon the glittering moon, he felt, as it
were, a sudden darkness above his head, and a cold terror crept over his
skin.

Then he stepped, trembling, out of the shadow of the rock into the
moonlight, and gazed up into the shadowy countenance of Immanâla. She
lay gaunt and spare, her long neck touching the snow, her eye-balls
beneath their wide lids fixed glassily on Nod. He gazed and gazed, until
it seemed he was sinking down, down into those wide unstirring eyes.

His heart seemed to rise up into his mouth. He coughed, and something
hard and round and tingling slid on to his tongue. He put up his hand to
his thick lips, and, like courage that steals into the mind when all
else is vain, fell into his hand, milk-pale and magical, the long-hidden
Wonder-stone.

    [Illustration: HE FELT A SUDDEN DARKNESS ABOVE HIS HEAD, AND A COLD
    TERROR CREPT OVER HIS SKIN.]

"I couch here, Ummanodda," said the Nameless, without stirring, "night
after night, hungry and thirsty, waiting for the Oomgar's head. Why does
the Mulla-mulgar keep me waiting so long for my supper?"

"Because, O Queen of Shadows," said Nod as calmly as he could--"because
the head of the Oomgar refuses to come without his legs--and his gun."

"Nay," said she, "there must be many a shallow gourd in the Oomgar's
hut. Cut off the head, and bring it hither yourself in that."

"Ohé," said Nod, "the Nameless has sharp teeth, if all that is said be
true. She shall cut, and I will carry. Princes of Tishnar have no tongue
for blood."

Immanâla crouched low, with jutting head. "Who is this Prince of Tishnar
that, having no tongue for blood, roasts meat with fire for an Oomgar,
the enemy of us all?"

"I, Nameless, am Nod," said he softly. "But meat dead is dead meat. What
against _me_ is it if this blind Oomgar hungers for scorched bones? It
is a riddle, Immanâla. Come with me now, then; let us palaver with him
together."

"Yea, together!" snarled the Nameless--"I to ride and thou to carry."
She gathered herself as if to spring.

Nod whispered, "O Tishnar!" and he stood stock-still.

Immanâla drew back her flat grey head from the snow, and shook it,
softly glancing at the moon.

"Why, O Prince of Tishnar, should we be at strife one with another? We
hate the Oomgar. And if it were not for this magic that is yours, my
servants would have slain him long since in his hunting."

"Ah, me!" said Nod, sighing it in Mulgar-royal, as if to himself alone,
"I myself love this Oomgar none too much. Did he not catch me walking
lonely in Munza in a wild pig snare? If he is to die, let him die, says
Nod. But I like not your fashion of hunting, Beast of Shadows, skulking
and creeping and scaring off his wandering supper-meat. Bring your
hunting-dogs into the open snow here out of their dens and lairs and
shadows. Then shall the Oomgar fight like an Oomgar, one against a
hundred, and Nod can go free!"

Immanâla rose bristling against the clearness of the moon.

"Tell me, Prince of Tishnar, what is this story you seem to be
whispering about my hunting-dogs?"

And Nod, with his Wonderstone clipped tight in his hot palm, bethought
him of all Mishcha's counsel, and promised Immanâla he would come down
the next night following. And if she would call her packs into the
ravine, he would lead them, and open the door of the hut and lure out
the Oomgar. "Then you, O fearless Queen of Shadows, shall watch the hunt
in peace," he said. "One forsaken Oomgar without his gun against
nine-and-ninety Jack-Alls and Jaccatrays, and perhaps a Roses or two,
famished and parched with cold. Ay, but before I whistle them up," he
muttered, as if to himself, "I must steal the Oomgar's M'Keesso's coat,
which is drenched through with magic."

Immanâla peered gloatingly from her rock. "The little Mulla-mulgar has a
cunning face," she said, "and a heart of many devices. I have heard of
his comings and goings in Munza-mulgar. But if he deal falsely with me,
though Tishnar came herself in all her brightness, I would wait and
wait. Not an Utt nor a Nikka-nikka but should be his enemy, and as for
those magicless Mulla-mulgars his brothers, who even now squat sullen
and hungry in their leafy houses, they shall lie cold as stones before
the morning light."

"Why," said Nod softly, "he must be frightened who begins to threaten. I
have no fear of you, O Nameless, who are but a creeping candle-fly at
twilight to the blaze of Tishnar's moon. Come hither to-morrow with your
half-starved hunting-dogs, and I'll show you good hunting, will I."

Without another word, with every hair on end, he ran swiftly back to the
hut by the way he had come. But even now his night's doings were not
ended, for in a while, by which time the Immanâla should have returned
from her watching-rock into the shadows of the forest, he ran out again,
and, crouching beneath the old Exxswixxia-bush under the Sulemnāgar,
he called softly: "Mishcha, old hare! Mishcha!"

When he had called her many times, she came slowly and warily limping
across the chequered snow. And Nod told her of all he had done that
night, and of how he had met and abashed the Nameless face to face. The
old hare watched dimly his flashing eyes and the vainglory of the face
of the young Mulgar Prince boasting in his finery, and she grimly
smiled.

"Chakka, chakka," says she; "tchackka, tchackka: you bleed before you're
wounded, Mulgar-royal."

But Nod in the heat of his glory cared nothing for what his old friend
said to quench it. And he told her to bring his brothers to the great
Ukka-tree that stood over against the shadow, where they talked, there
to wait and watch till morning. "By that time," he said, "I shall have
finished my supper with the Nameless, and the Oomgar will know me for
the Prince I am."

Mishcha wagged slowly her old head. She hated the Oomgar, but she hated
the Beast of Shadows more, and off she hopped again, stiff and cold, to
seek out Thimble and Thumb.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI


Battle went out hunting as usual the next morning. Tracks of leopards
were everywhere in the night's thin snow. He ventured not far into the
forest, and returned with only a poor old withered bird, too cold and
weak to fly off from his gun.

"It's this way, my son," he said; "I've heard the thing before. That
howl brings half the forest against me, like blue-flies to meat. So all
I does is to keep a weather-eye open, and musket a-cock. One of these
days, Mulgar _mio_, Shadow or no Shadow, she shall have a brace of
bullets in her vitals, as sure as my name's Battle." But in spite of his
fine words, he crouched gloomy and distracted beside his fire all day,
casting ever and anon a stealthy glance over his shoulder, and lifting
his eye slowly above the flames, to survey the clustering fringes of the
forest around his hut.

But Nod told Battle nothing of his talk with the old hare. He did not
as much as tell him even that his brothers were near, or that he had
seen Immanâla. He cleaned his master's gun. He busied himself over his
Nano-cakes and nuts, and prevailed on Battle to eat by making him laugh
at his antics. The more he thought of leaving him, and of the danger of
the coming night, and the stony cruelty of Immanâla's gloating eyes, his
heart fell deeper and deeper into trouble and dismay. But each time when
it seemed he must run away and hide himself he gulped his terror down,
and touched his Wonderstone.

He himself lugged out Battle's Juddie when evening fell. But Battle had
no mind for merriment and braveries that night. He picked out idly on
the strings old mournful chanties that sailors sometimes sing; and he
taught Nod a new song to bray out in his queer voice, "She's me forgot":

    "'Me who have sailèd
       Leagues across
     Foam haunted
       By the albatross,
     Time now hath made
       Remembered not:
     Ay, my dear love
       Hath me forgot.

    "'Oh, how should she,
       Whose beauty shone,
     Keep true to one
       Such long years gone?
     Grief cloud those eyes!--
       I ask it not:
     Content am I--
       She's me forgot.

    "'Here where the evening
       Ooboë wails,
     Bemocking
       England's nightingales,
     Bravely, O sailor,
       Take thy lot;
     Nor grieve too much,
       She's thee forgot!'"

But even between his slow-drawled, shakety notes of deep and shrill Nod
listened for the least stir in the forest, and seemed to hear the low,
hungry calls and scamperings of Immanâla's hunting-pack, which she had
summoned from far and near to the tangled ravine beneath the rock.

He got Battle early to bed by telling him he would dress his wounded
shoulder, which was angry and inflamed, with a poultice of leaves such
as his mother, Mutta-matutta, had taught him to make. "Now," says he,
"it be broad full-moontime, master, and all Munza-mulgar will be gone
hunting. But wake not. Nod, Prince of Tishnar, will watch;" and even as
he said it came remembrance of the Pigs to mind.

Battle laughed, thinking what wondrous good sense these two-legged
monkeys seemed to have, concerning which King Angeca had yet himself
often assured him that it is all nothing but a show and pretence, since
man alone has wisdom and knowledge, and little remains over for the
beasts to share.

The warmth and sleepiness of his big poultice soon set him snoring. And
in a blaze of moonlight Nod warily opened the door, and stood in the
squat black shadow of the hut, looking out over the forest. He had
bound himself up tight. He had wound up his Wonderstone in a piece of
lead that he had found in the hut to keep it from hopping in his pocket,
and had stuck the sailor's sharp sheath-knife down the leg of his
breeches.

Then, like but an Utt or a gnome in that great waste of whiteness, he
sallied out to destroy the Nameless. He came to the rock, but no shadow
couched there now in the sheen. He crept on all fours, and between two
great frost-lit boulders peeped into the ravine. There, changing and
stirring, shone the numberless small green lanterns of the eyes of
Immanâla's hunting-pack. He heard their low whinings and the soft crunch
of their clawed feet in the snow. Else all was still.

And Nod called in a low voice: "Why do you hide from me, Immanâla, Queen
of Shadows?"

He waited, but no answer came. "Venture out, mistress," cried Nod
louder, "and we will be off together to the Oomgar's hut. You shall sit
on the roof and watch the hunting-dogs at their supper."

At that, up by a narrow path from the ravine stole Immanâla, and all the
Jack-Alls and Jaccatrays fell silent, staring with blazing eyes out of
the darkness.

"Call not so lustily, Prince of Tishnar!" she said, fawning; "we shall
awake the Oomgar."

"Ohé," said Nod boldly; "he sleeps deep. He fears neither beast nor
Meermut in all this frozen Munza. Bid your greedy slaves stand ready,
Immanâla. When I whistle them, supper is up."

Immanâla lifted her flat grey head, and seemed to listen. "I hear the
harps of Tishnar in the forest. The leaves of the branches of the trees
of my master Nōōmanossi stir, and yet there moves no wind."

She fixed her colourless eyes on Nod, with her ears on her long, smooth
forehead pricked forward. "What is the cunning Mulgar thinking beneath
all he says? Like fine sand in water, I hear the rustling of his
thoughts."

Nod took a long breath and shut his eyes. "I was thinking," he said,
"what stupid fellows must be these dogs of yours, seeing that each and
every one keeps whimpering, 'The head--the head for me!' But they must
wait in patience yet a little longer, if even a knucklebone is to be a
share. I will go forward and choose out all that I and the
Mulla-mulgars, my brothers, want of the Oomgar's house-treasures before
the Jaccatrays tear everything to pieces."

"Softly, now, softly," said Immanâla. "You think very little of me,
Nizza-neela. Do you dream I came from far to protect you from my slaves,
Roses and Jaccatray, and now am to get nothing for my pains? What of
that stiff coat drenched with magic? That is mine. No, no, little greedy
Mulgar; we share together, or I have all."

"Well, well," said Nod, as if unwilling, "you shall take part, mistress,
though all that's there is truly Tishnar's. Follow quietly! I will see
if my Zbaffle be still asleep."

Immanâla crouched snarling in the moonlight, and Nod ran swiftly to the
hut. The moon streamed in on the sailor's upturned face, where, lying
flat on his back, he snored and snored and snored. Then Nod very quietly
took down from its wooden hook the sailor's great skin coat, his belt of
Ephelanto-hide, his huge hair hat, all such as in his wanderings he had
captured from black Kings and men of magic. He filled the pockets, he
stuffed them with bullets and copper rings and stones and lumps of
ice--everything heavy that he could find. At the rattling of the stones
Battle rolled over, muttering hoarsely in his sleep. Nod stopped
instantly and listened. No words he understood. Then once more he set to
work, and soon had dragged the huge stiff coat and hat and belt one by
one over the door-log into the snow.

"Hither, come hither! Hasten, mistress!" he called softly, capering
round about them. "Here's a sight to cheer your royal heart! Here's
riches! What have we here but the magic coat which the Oomgar stripped
from the M'keeso of the old Lord Shillambansa, that feeds a hundred
peacocks on his grave?"

Very, very heedfully Immanâla drew near on her belly in the snow.
Cat-like, she smelt and capered.

"Have no fear, Beast of Shadows," called Nod softly; "the Oomgar sleeps
like moss on the Tree of Everlasting."

Then all her vanity and greed welled up in the Beast of Shadows, for
whosoever her dam may be, and all her lineage of solitude and
strangeness, she has more greed than a wolf, more vanity than a vixen.
She thrust her long lean head into the Cap.

"Do but now let me help you, mistress," said Nod, "as I used to help the
Oomgar. Stand upright, and I will thrust your arms into the sleeves. We
must hasten, we must be quiet." At every glance her greed and vanity
increased. Nod heaved and tugged till his thick fur lay dank on his
poll, and at last the dreadful Beast was draped and swathed and mantled
from ears to tail in the Oomgar's coat.

"Now for the Dondo's belt of sorcery," said Nod. "Sure, none will dare
sneeze in Munza-mulgar when the sailorman is gone." He put the thick
belt round her lean body, though his head swam with her muskiness, and
drew it tight into the buckle.

"Gently, gently, little brother!" sighed Immanâla. "It is heavy, and I
scarce can breathe."

"The very Oomgar himself used often to snort," said Nod.

"But why does he keep so many stones in his pocket?" pined Immanâla.

"Why, Queen of Wisdom! What if the wind should blow, and all his magic
flit away? Ay, ay, ay! stripped from the M'keeso of the dead Lord
Shillambansa came this coat into my Messimut's hands, who feeds five
hundred peacocks on his grave! And now his wondrous Cap of Hair! Nine
Fulbies, as I live, were flayed to skin that cap withal," said Nod, "and
seven rogue Ephelantoes gave the Oomgar of their tails."

"Ah yes, ah yes!" groaned Immanâla; "but what are seventy Ephelantoes
compared with Immanâla, Queen of All?"

"Now," said Nod, "I will weary myself no more with speeches. Is it
warm?"

"I am in a furnace; I burn."

"Is it too loose? Does it wrinkle? Does it sag?"

"Oh, but I can breathe but a mouthful at a time!"

"Last and last again, then," said Nod, packing into the pockets one or
two of the stones and bullets and lumps of ice that had fallen out, "is
it comfortable?"

"O my friend, my scarce-wise Mulgar-royal, when did you ever hear that
grand clothes were comfortable?"

"Wait but a little moment, then, while I go in to fetch the magic-glass,
that will show you your face, Immanâla, handsome and lovesome."

The Beast struggled faintly in her magic coat. "Have a care--oh, have a
care, Ummanodda! The gun, the gun! The Oomgar might wake. Let me creep
swiftly to my stone, and bring the glass to me there."

"The Oomgar will not wake," said Nod; "he sleeps as deep as the Ghost of
the Rose upon the bosom of Tishnar."

"But, O Mulgar, think again. Strip off from my body this grievous belt,"
she pleaded; "you will keep nothing for yourself."

"Have no fear, friend," said Nod shakily; "I will keep"--and his eyes
met hers in the shadow of the hat, stony and merciless and ravenous--"I
will keep," he grunted, "my Zbaffle."

He went into the hut and seated himself on a little stool. Then very
carefully he took the Wonderstone out of his pocket and unwrapped it.
Its pale gleam mingled softly with the moonlight, as a rainbow mingles
with foam. Wetting his left thumb with spittle, he rubbed it softly,
softly, Samaweeza, three times round. And distant and clear as the
shining of a star a voice seemed to cry: "The Spirit of Tishnar answers,
Prince Ummanodda Nizza-neela; what dost thou require of me?"

"Oh, by Tishnar, only this," said Nod, trembling: "that the
nine-and-ninety hunting-dogs in their hunting mistake the ravening
Beast of Shadows, Immanâla, for the sailorman, Zbaffle, my master and
friend."

And surely, when Nod looked out from the doorway, it seemed that,
strange and terrible, the shape muffled within the Oomgar's coat was
swollen out, stretched lean and tall, that even lank gold hair did
dangle on her shoulders from beneath the furry cap. It seemed he heard a
far-away crying--crying, out of that monstrous bale, as the creature
within, standing hidden from the moonlight, began to sway and stir and
totter over the snow. And Nod, choking with terror, called one word
only--"Sulâni!" Then, with all his force, he whistled once, twice,
thrice, clear and loud and long and shrill; then he shut fast the door
and barred it, and went and crouched beside the Oomgar's bed.

Already Battle was wide awake. "Ahoy!" said he, and started up and
thrust out his hand for his gun.

"Steady--oh, steady, Oomgar Zbaffle!" said Nod. "It is dogs of the
Immanâla only, that soon will be gone."

Even as he spoke rose out of the distance a dreadful baying and howling.
Battle leapt up out of his bed to the window-hole. But Nod squatted
shivering, his face hidden in his hands.

"Ghost of me! What is it?" said Battle to himself. "What beast is this
they're after--M'keeso, or Man of the Woods?"

It reeled, it fell, it rose up; it wheeled slowly, faintly weeping and
whining, and then stood still, with arms lifted high, struggling like a
man with a great burden. But over the crudded snow, like a cloud across
the moon, streamed with brindled hair on end, jaws gaping and flaming
eyes, the hungry pack of the Shadow's hunting-dogs. "Oomgar, Oomgar,
Oomgar, Oomgar!" they yelled one to another. "Immanâla, Immanâla, death,
death, death!" And presently, while Battle in amazement watched, there
came one miserable cry of fear and pain. The tottering shape seemed to
melt, to vanish.

Then Nod scampered and opened the door.

"What say you now, hunting-dogs? Was the Oomgar tender or tough?"

"Tough, tough!" they yelled.

"Go, then, and tell your mistress, Queen of Shadows, Immanâla, that you
have supped with the Prince of Tishnar, and are satisfied."

"Why lurks the little Mulgar in the Oomgar's hut?" yelped a lank hoary
Jaccatray.

"I guard her treasures for the Nameless," said Nod; but he had hardly
said the word when he heard Battle striding to the door.

"It's no good prattling and blabbing, my son," he was saying. "If come
it be, it's come. Off, now, while your skin's whole, and let me give the
rogues a taste of powder."

Two or three of the hunting-dogs yelped aloud. "What, my brothers!" said
Nod. "Did you hear the Oomgar's Meermut calling for his gun?"

A few of the meaner dogs scampered off a few paces at this, sniffing and
cocking their ears.

"Out of the way, Pongo," whispered the Englishman through the doorway,
and the next moment there fell a crash that nearly toppled Nod into the
snow, and Battle strode out of the hut with his smoking musket. But the
cowardly Jack-Alls, at sound of his gun and at sight of the ghost of the
Oomgar they had torn to pieces, lifted up their voices in a howl of
terror, and in an instant over the snow they swept off at a gallop, and
soon were lost in the moonless silence and shadowiness of Munza.

Nod turned towards the hut. Battle stood in his breeches, his gun in his
hand, his blue eyes wide open as if in fear.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII


"What's these, what's these?" he muttered, for there, on the farther
bank of the stream, stood in the twilight of the sinking moon two
strange, solitary figures, motionless, staring. Nod ran to Battle, and
laid his long narrow hand on the glimmering gun-barrel. "Oh, not shoot,
not shoot!" he said, "black Oomgars--no; Mulla-mulgars, too, Nod's
friends, Nod's brothers!"

"What's he jabbering about?" said Battle, with eyes fixed brightly on
the two gaunt shapes.

"Nod's brothers, there," said Nod--"Thumb, Thimble, Thimble, Thumb. Nod
show Oomgar. Oh, wait softly!" He ran swiftly over the snow till he came
to the frozen bank of the stream. But still his brothers never stirred,
ragged and hollow-eyed with hunger and cold.

"Come," said Nod, lifting up his hands in salutation; "there is no fear,
no danger! Here is Nod, my brothers."

"What voice was that we heard?" said Thumb, trembling. "Can the mouth of
the Oomgar speak after it is shut in death?"

"The Oomgar is not dead, Thumb, my brother; the hunting-packs killed
only that Beast of Shadows, Immanâla, who hoped to kill us all, and the
Oomgar, too. Come over, my brothers! Every day, every night, Nod has
talked in his quiet with you."

"We do not understand the little Oomgar," said Thimble angrily. "Who are
you, the youngest of us all, to lie and make cunning against the people
of the forest? Let your master, the blood-spilling Oomgar, shoot us,
too. What are we in such a heap of bones? We have no fear of him. On all
fours, back, parakeet; tell him where the Mulgars' hearts lie hid. Maybe
he'll fling his Nizza-neela a bone."

"O Thimble, Mulla-mulgar, why do you seek out all the black words for
me? Haven't I done all for the best? Did I play false with you when I
saved you from the spits of the Minimuls? The little Horse of Tishnar
smelt out my wounded shoulder. And the Oomgar's strangling trap caught
me. But he did not kill me. He took me, and was kind to me, fed me and
shared his fire with me, and we were 'messimuts.' Yet all day, all
night, moon and no-moon, I have talked in myself with you, and run
looking for you in my dreams, while I slept in the hairless Oomgar's
hut. The Nameless is gone for a little while. The Oomgar is wise with
his hands and in little things. Now I may go. He kills only for meat,
Mulla-mulgars. He will do no harm to Ummanodda's brothers. Come over
with me!"

Thumb and Thimble, with toes a little turned in, and heads bent forward,
stood listening in the snow.

"Why, then," said Thumb, muttering, "if he kills only for food, and
relishes not his own flavour in the pot, let him hobble out here to us
now and greet us, like with like--Oomgar-mulgar with Mulla-mulgar--and
leave his spit-fire and his magic behind him. But into his hut, nor
stumbling among his Munza bones, we will _not_ go. And if he will not
come, brother to brother, then it is 'Gar Mulgar dusangee' between us
three, O youngest son of Seelem. Go back to your cooking-pots. I and
Thimble will journey on alone. All day would the Harp-strings be
twangling over Mulgars smelling of blood."

So Nod, cold with misery, went back to Battle, who sat yawning, gun on
knee, beside his fire.

"Oomgar!" he said, leaning a little on one small hand, and standing a
few paces distant from the sailor, "my brothers, the Mulla-mulgars, sons
of Seelem, brother of Assasimmon, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar, are
here. They say Nod is not true, speaks lies, eater-of-flesh, no child of
Tishnar." He stared forlornly into Battle's face. "Tired of his living
is Nod now. Shoot straight with Oomgar Zbaffle's gun. Nod will be
still."

The Englishman crinkled up his eyelids, opened his mouth, and burst out
laughing.

"To tell ye sober truth, my son," he said, "bullets and powder Battle
haven't much left to waste. And what's lark-pie to a hungry sailor! As
for them hunched-up hobbagoblins over yonder, don't 'ee heed what envy
has to say. Battle is hands down on your side, my son, and let 'em
meddle if they dare! But mercy on us," he added under his breath, "what
wouldn't my old mother have said to hear these Pongoes chatter? 'Shoot
straight!' says he. 'Tired of his living!' says he. Button up your
sheep's-jacket, my son. We'll home to England yet. And, what's more"--he
waved his hand towards the lonely figures still standing motionless in
the silvery dusk--"Andy Battle's best respects to the hairy gentlemen,
and there's a warm welcome and fresh-picked bones for breakfast. But the
night's creeping cold, and bed's bed, old friend, and Andy's eyes was
never made for moth-hunting. So here goes." He went in with his gun, and
Nod heard him shut and bar the door.

Nod listened awhile, with eyes fixed sorrowfully on the fast-shut door;
then, having heaped more logs on to the fire, he went slowly back to his
brothers.

Now that the moon was down, and night at its darkest, the frost
hardened. And Thumb and Thimble, when they were sure the Oomgar was
asleep in his hut, were glad enough to hobble across the ice and to sit
and warm themselves before the fire. Their jackets hung in tatters.
Thumb's left second toe was frost-bitten, and Thimble's eyes were so
sore from the glaring whiteness of the snow he could only dimly see.
Moreover, they were weary of living and sleeping in their tree-houses
among the scatter-brained Forest-mulgars, and though at first they sat
shaky and sniffing, and started if but a dry leaf snapped in the fire,
they listened in silence to Nod's long story of his doings, and began to
see at last that what he had done by Mishcha's counsel had been for the
best, and not for his own sake only.

"But we cannot stay here, Ummanodda," said Thumb. "We could not rub
noses with the Oomgar. His voice, his smell! He is not of our kind,
little brother. And now that all the peoples of Munza-mulgar are our
enemies, we must press on, with no more idling and fine eating and
sitting shanks to fire, or we shall never reach the Valleys alive."

"I am ready, Thumb, my brother," Nod answered. "The Oomgar has been kind
to me, his own kind's kind. It was my Tishnar's Wonderstone that saved
him from the teeth of the Nine-and-ninety, and from Immanâla's magic,
though why should I tell it is so? Now they will think it is his
skin-bonneted Meermut that stalks to and fro with the ghost-gun of a
ghost. They will forsake this place, every one--claw and talon, upright
and fours, every one. How long shall a flesh-eater, hungry and
gluttonous, live on dried berries and nuts? Me gone; unless the frost
flies soon, or a great Bobberie, as he does say, comes up from that
strange water, the Sea, over yonder, the Oomgar will die. O brothers,
just as that Oomgar, the Portingal, died whose bones dangled over us
when we stood by Mutta's knee and listened to them clicking. Do but let
me stay to say good-bye, and we will go together at morning!"

So, when day began to break, Thumb and Thimble hastened away and hid
themselves in the Ukka-trees till Nod should come out to them. Nod
busied himself, and baked his last feast with his master. He broiled him
some bones--they were little else--of the Jack-All the sailor had shot
in the moonlight. And when Battle--strange and solitary as he seemed to
Nod now, after talking with and looking on his brothers--when Battle
opened the door and came out, Nod told him as best he could, in the few
words of his English, of Immanâla and her hunting-dogs, and of his
brothers. And he told him that he must leave him now, and go on his
travels again. Battle listened, scratching his head, and with a patient,
perplexed grin on his face, but he could understand only very little of
what Nod meant. For even a Mulla-mulgar, though he can repeat like a
child, or like a parrot, by rote, has small brains for really learning
another language, so that it may be a telling picture of his thoughts.
Indeed, Battle thought that poor Nod had fallen a little crazy with the
cold. He fondled him and scratched his head--this Prince of Tishnar--as
if he were at his hearth at home, and Nod his country cat. But at least
he knew that the little Mulgar wished to leave him, and he made no
hindrance except his own sadness to his going. He gave him out of his
own pocket a silver groat with a hole in it, and a large piece of fine
looking-glass, besides the necklet of clear blue Bamba-beads, and three
rings of copper. He gave him, too, one leaf of his little fat book, and
in this Nod wrapped his Wonderstone. Nor even in his kindness did Battle
say the least word about his big coat and Ephelanto-belt and his Fulby's
hairy hat--all which things he supposed (Mulgars being by nature thieves
and robbers in his mind) Nod's brothers had stolen.

"Good-bye, my son," he said. "'Bravely, ole sailor, take your lot!'
There, there; I make no dwelling on fine words. Good-bye, and don't
forget your larnin'. There's many a full-growed Christian Battle's come
acrost in his seafarin'--but there, flattery butters no parsnips.
Good-bye, once more, Mulgar _mio_, and thankee kindly."

Nod raised his hands above his head. "Oomgar, Oomgar," he said, with
eyes shut and trembling lips, "ah-mi, ah-mi; sulâni, ghar magleer."
Then, with a heavy heart, he turned away, and without looking back ran
scampering as fast as he could to the five Ukka-trees. His brothers had
long been awaiting him, and swang down gladly from their sleeping-bowers
in the trees. Then, with the hut and the Oomgar's pillar of smoke upon
their cudgel-hand, they set out once more, all but due North, towards
the Valleys of Assasimmon.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII


The sun rose and beat down on the bare expanse of snow. But soon they
lurched headlong down again into the forest. But it was forest not so
dense as the forest of the Minimul mounds, nor by a tenth part as dark
as the forest where haunts the Telateuti. At scent of Nod every small
beast and bird scuttled off and flew away. And it was dreary marching
for the travellers where all that lived feared even their savour on the
wind. But by evening they had pushed on past Battle's farthest hunting,
and being wearied with their long day's march, nor any tracks of
leopards to be seen, they made no fire with their fire-sticks, but
gathered a big heap of dry leaves scattered in abundance by this
strange cold, this Witzaweelwūllah, and huddled themselves close for
warmth in sleep.

Next day they broke out into the open again, and before them, clear as
amber or coral, still and beautiful in the sunrise, rose afar off upon
the horizon the solitary peaks, which are seven--Kush, Zut, and Kippel,
Solmi, Makkri, Mōōt, and Mulgar-meerez--the Mountains of
Arakkaboa.

All this day they trudged on in difficulty and discomfort, for the
ground was sharp and stony, and sloped now perpetually upward. And
though at first sight of them it had seemed they had need but to stretch
out a finger to touch the mountain-tops, they found the farther they
journeyed towards them the more distant seemed these wonderful peaks to
be. And their spirits began to sink.

On the evening of the fifth day Thumb and Thimble were stooping together
over their fire-sticks in a great waste of bare rocks, while Nod was
pounding up a sweet but unknown fruit they had found in their day's
march growing close upon the ground, when suddenly they heard in the
distance a hubbub of shouts and cries the like of which they had never
heard in their lives before. They hastily concealed their small bundles
of food in a crevice of the rocks, and, creeping cautiously, peered out
in the last rays of the sun in order to discover the cause of this
prodigious uproar.

And they saw advancing towards them a vast host and multitude of the
painted Babbabōōma-mulgars, travelling, as is their custom, in
company across these desolate wastes. On they came rapidly, the biggest
males on the margins. But presently, while they were yet some little way
off, at sound of a great shout all came to a standstill, the sun now
being set, to take up their night-quarters. Even in the fading light
their body-colours glowed, scarlet and purple, and bright Candar blue,
where, squatting in their hundreds at supper (some meanwhile pacing
sedately on the outskirts of the company like watchmen, to and fro on
all fours, with long, doglike snouts and jutting teeth), they made their
evening encampment.

All that night our Mulla-mulgars never ventured to kindle a fire. They
huddled for warmth as best they could in a crevice of the rocks, warmed
only by their own hairy bodies. For they had heard of old from Seelem
how these Babbabōōma troops resent with ferocity the least
meddling with them. They will speedily stone to death any intruder, and
will tear a leopard in pieces with their teeth. But the travellers, all
three, curiously, cautiously peeping out, watched their doings while
there was the least light left, taking good care that not a spark of
their jackets should be seen, for these Babbabōōmas fret more
fiercely even than our bulls at the colour red.

They watched them sprinkling, scratching themselves, like the
Mullabruks, with their feet, and dusting their great bodies with dry
snow, rubbing it in with their hands, though for what purpose, seeing
that snow had never whitened their pilgrimages before, who can say? The
children, the Karakeena-Babbabōōmas, squealed and frisked and
gambolled in the last sunshine together, quarrelling and at play. The
old men sat silent, munching with half-closed eyes, and watching them.
And it seemed that the big shes of the Babbabōōmas had brought
some small tufty, goatlike animals with them, which they now sat milking
into pots or gourds. And with this milk they presently fed the littlest
of the young ones.

For many hours after the sun had gone down the three brothers sat wide
awake, whispering together, listening to the talk and palaver of the
chiefs of the Babbabōōmas. Sometimes they seemed to be clamouring,
fifty together; and then presently a great still voice would be lifted
over them, and all would fall silent; while of its calm authority the
master-voice said, "So shall it be," or "Thus do we make it." Then once
more the clamour of the rabble would break out again. But what its
meaning was, and whether they were merely gossiping together, or
quarrelling, or holding consultation, or whether it was that the loud
voice gave law and justice to the rest, Nod tried in vain to discover.
So at last, though much against his brothers' counsel, very curious to
see what could occasion all this talk, he crept gradually, boulder by
boulder, nearer to their great rocky bivouac. And there, by the silvery
lustre of a dying moon, he peeped and peered. But though he plainly saw
against the whiteness the pacing sentinels, and others of the
Babbabōōmas, huddling by families close for warmth in sleep
beneath the rocks, he could not discover where their parliament or
talkers were assembled. But still he heard them gabbling, and still,
ever and anon, the great harsh voice sounding above all until at last
this, too, ceased, and save for the befrosted watchmen, the whole
innumerable horde of them lay--with the peaks of Arakkaboa to north of
them, and Sulemnāgar to south--in that still dying moonlight fast
asleep. Then he, too, scuffled softly back by the way he had come.

By morning (for the Babbabōōmas are on the march before daybreak),
when the brothers awoke, cold and cramped, in their rocky cavern, the
whole concourse was gone, and not a sign left of them except their
scattered shells and husks, their innumerable footprints, and the stones
they had rooted up in search of whatever small creeping food might lurk
beneath. Else they seemed a dream--Meermuts of the moonlight!

By noon of next day the travellers approached the mountain-slopes. They
crossed down into a valley, and now the farther they went the steeper
rose the bare, snow-flecked mountain-side, and beyond and around them
loftier heights yet, while in the midst spired into the midday Kush, the
first of the seven of the sacred peaks of Tishnar. Ever and again they
were startled by the sudden crash of the snow sweeping in long-drawn
avalanches from the steeps of the hills. And though it was desolate to
see those towering and unfriendly mountains, their snowy precipices and
dazzling peaks, yet their hearts came back to them, for a warm wind was
blowing through the valley, and they knew the white and cold of the snow
would soon be over, and the forest be green again, and once more would
come the flowering of the fruit-trees, and the ripening of the nuts.

But here it was that a bitter quarrel began between the brothers that
might have ended in not one of them ever seeing Tishnar's Valleys alive.
It was like this: Not knowing in which direction to be going in order to
seek for a path or pass whereby to scale Arakkaboa, they were at a loss
what to be doing. Even the Munza-mulgars detest being more than the
height of the loftiest forest-tree above their shadows on the ground;
more especially, therefore, did these Mulla-mulgars, who never, or very
rarely, as I have said many times already, climb trees at all. So they
determined to stay awhile here and rest and eat until some Mulgar should
come along of whom they could ask the way. It was a valley rich with
the sweet ground-fruit I have already mentioned, whose spikes of a faint
and thorny blue mount just above the snow, and whose berries, owing to
their sugary coats or pods, resist all coldness. So that, without
mention of Ukka-nuts, of which a grove grew not far beyond the bend of
the valley, the travellers had plenty to eat. They had also an abundance
of water, because of a little torrent that came roaring through its ice
near by the trees they had chosen for their lodging. The wind that
softly blew along this low land was warmer, or, at least, not so keen
and fitful as the forest wind, and they were by now growing accustomed
to the cold. For the night, however, they raised up for themselves a
kind of leaning shelter, or huddle, of branches to be moved against the
wind according as it blew up or down the valley.

But idleness leads to mischief. And not to press on is to be sliding
backward. And to wait for help is to let help limp out of sight. And
overcome, perhaps, by the luscious fruit, of which they ate far too much
and far too often, and growing sluggardly with sleep, the travellers
soon went on to bickering and scuffling together. With all this food,
too, and long sleep and idleness, their courage began to droop. And if
they heard any sound of living thing, even so much as a call or
crackling branch, they would sneak off and hide in their night-shelter,
not caring now for any kind of boldness nor to think of venturing over
these homeless mountains.

So it came about that one night, as they were sleeping together under
their huddle, as was their custom, Thumb, who had been nibbling fruit
nearly all day long, cried out in a loud and terrible voice in his
sleep, till Thimble, half awakened by his raving, picked up his thick
cudgel and laid it soundly across his brother's shoulders where he lay.
Thumb started up out of his sleep, and in an instant the two brothers
were up and at each other, wrestling and kicking, gnashing their teeth,
and guzzling through their throats and noses like mere Gungas,
Mullabruks, or Manquabees. Poor Nod, not knowing what was the cause of
all the trouble, got a much worse drubbing than either, till at last, in
their furious struggling, all three brothers rolled from under the
wattles into the pale glimmering of the stars and snow. For in this
valley after the sun goes moves a phantom light or phosphorescence over
the snow. Brought suddenly to their senses by the chill dark air, the
travellers sat dimly glaring one at another, hunched, bruised, and
breathless. And Nod, seeing his brothers so enraged, and preparing to
fight again, and having had half his senses battered out by their rough
usage, asked what was amiss.

"Ask him, ask him!" broke out Thimble, "the fat and stupid, who deafens
the whole forest with his gluttonous screams."

"'Glutton, glutton!'" shouted Thumb. "How many nights, my brother
Ummanodda, have we lain awake comforting one another that this dismal
grasshopper has only one nose to snore through! I'll teach you,
graffalegs, to break my ribs with a cudgel! Wait till a blink of morning
comes! Oh, grammousie, to think I have put up with such a Mullabruk so
long!" He lifted a frozen hunch of snow and flung it full in Thimble's
face, and soon once more they were scuffling and struggling, cuffing and
kicking in the silence that lay like a cloak upon all the sacred
Valleys of Tishnar. They fought till, broken in wind and strength, they
could fight no more. And Nod was kept busy all the rest of the darkness
of that night mending the wounds of, and trying to make peace with, now
one brother, now the other.

As soon as daybreak began to stir between the hills, Thumb and Thimble
rose up together, and without a word, with puffed and sullen faces, went
off on their fours and began gathering a good store of fruit and
Ukka-nuts, each very cautious of approaching too near the other in his
search. Nod skipped drearily from one to the other, pleading with them
to be friends. But he got only hard words for his pains, and even at
last was accused by both of them of stirring up a quarrel between them
for his own pride and pleasure. He edged sadly back to the huddle, and
sat gloomily watching them, wondering what next they would be at. He was
soon to know, for first Thimble came back to him where he sat beside
their night-hut and bade him help tie up his bundle.

"Where are you going to, Thimble?" said Nod. "O Thimble, think a little
first! All these days we have journeyed in peace together. What would
our father, Royal Seelem, say to see us now fighting and quarrelling
like Mullabruks, and all because you cudgelled Thumb in his sleep?"

"In his sleep!" screamed Thimble. "Tell that to your flesh-eating
Oomgar, Prince of Bonfires! How could he be asleep, when he was
squealing like a Bōōbab full of parakeets? I go back--back _now_.
Who can climb mountains with a fat hulk who takes two breaths to an
Ukka-nut? Come, if you dare! But I care not, whether or no." And with
that, catching up bundle and cudgel, with a last black look over his
shoulder at Thumb, Thimble started off down the valley towards the
forest they had so bravely left behind.

Not a moment had he been gone when Thumb came limping and waddling back
to the shelter, loaded with nuts and berries.

"Sit here and sulk, if you like, Nizza-neela," he growled angrily. "Come
with me, or traipse back with that scatterbrains. Whichever you please,
I care not. I am sick of the glutton that eats all day and cannot sleep
of nights for thinking of his supper."

"How can I go with you," said Nod bitterly, "when I would not go with
Thimble? O Mulla-mulgar Thumb, you who are the eldest and strongest and
wisest of us, be now the best, too! Hasten after Thimble, and bring him
back to be friends. How can we show our faces to our Uncle Assasimmon,
even if we get over these dreadful mountains, saying we wrangled and
gandered all one cold night together simply because you screamed out
with fear in your sleep?"

"Thumb scream! Thumb afraid! Thumb sweat after Lean-legs! If you had not
been my mother's youngest son, Ummanodda, you should never open that
impudent mouth again!" And with that, off went Thumb, too, not caring
whither, so long as it led him farthest away from Thimble.

Now, not to make too much ado about this precious quarrel, this is what
befell the travellers: Thimble, face towards Munza, trotted--one, two,
three; one, two, three--stonily on. But in a while solitude began to
gather about him, and the cold after the heat of the fight struck chill
and woke again his lazy senses. He sat down to wrap up his bruises,
wondering where to be going, what to be doing. The Oomgar, the Nameless,
the Minimuls, the River, the Gunga--even if, he thought, he should
escape again all the dangers they had so narrowly but just come through
together, what lay at the end of it all? A little blackened heap of
ashes, the mockery of Munza-mulgar, and his mother's speechless and
sorrowful ghost. What's more, while he sat idly nibbling his nuts, for
his tongue had suddenly wearied of the luscious ground-fruit, he saw
moving between the rocks no sweeter company than a she-leopard gazing
grinningly on him where he sat beneath his rock.

Now, these leopards, made cunning by experience, and knowing that a
Mulla-mulgar will fight long and bravely for his life, if, when they are
hunting alone, they spy out such a one alone, too, they trot softly back
until they meet with another of their kind. Then, with purring and
clashing of whiskers, they come to a sworn and friendly understanding
together, sharing out their supper-meat before they have so much as
sharpened their claws. Then at nightfall both go hunting their prey in
harmony together. Thimble well knew this crafty and evil practice, and
when dusk fell, he listened and watched without stirring. And soon, over
the snow, he heard the faint mewings and coughings of his enemies, both
shes, of wonderful clear, dark Roses, coming on as thievishly and as
softly towards him as a cat in search of her kittens. So he tore off a
little strip of his tattered red jacket and laid it in the snow. Then
away he scuttled till he must needs pause to breathe himself beneath a
farther rock.

Meanwhile the ravenous huntresses, having come to the strip of
Mulgar-scented rag, of their natures had to stop and sniff and to
disport themselves with that awhile, as if to smell a dinner cooking is
to enjoy it more when cooked. This done, they once more set forward with
sharper hunger along Thimble's track. Three times did Thimble so play
with them, and at the third appetizing rag the leopards, famished and
over-eager, hardly paused at all over his keepsake, but came swiftly
coursing after him. And the first, that (of her own craft) was much the
younger and fleeter, soon out-distanced her hunting-mate, the which was
exactly the reason of Thimble's trickery with his red flag. For when,
panting and alone, the first Roses had got well ahead of the other,
Thimble dashed suddenly out upon her from a rock, and before she could
bare her teeth, he had caught her forefoot between his grinding jaws and
bitten it clean to the bone. It spoilt poor Roses' taste for supper,
and, seeing now that her sister was past fighting, and only too eager to
leave the Mulgar to his lone, her mate slunk off without more ado to her
own lair, to feast on the morning's bones of a frost-bitten Mullabruk.

But Thimble, though he had worsted the leopards, hadn't much liking or
stomach for nights as wild as this. Thumb's nightmares were sweet peace
to it. All the next day he wandered about, not heeding whither his
footsteps led him. And so it came about that just before evening he
stumbled upon the very same valley he had left in his sulks the morning
before. There, indeed, sat Nod, fast asleep in the evening light for
sheer weariness of watching for his brothers, who, some faint hope had
told him, would return.

As for Thumb, after limping on up the valley a little more than a
league, he soon grew ashamed and sick at heart at having so easily
become a silly child again. He sat down under a great boulder, humped
round with ants' nests, too desolate to go on, too proud to turn back.
All that day and the next he sat moodily watching these never-idle
little creatures, that, afraid of nothing, are feared of all. They had
tunnelled and walled, and wherever sunbeams fell had cast back the snow
that hung above the galleries. And all day long they kept going and
coming, carrying syrup and eggs and meat, and all this with endless
palaver of their waving horns, as if there were nothing else that side
of Arakkaboa but the business of their city. Thumb alive they paid no
heed to, but Thumb dead they would have picked to the bare bones before
sunset.

The next evening Thumb's better head overcame him, and back he went to
his brothers, sitting miserable and forlorn in the new moonlight beneath
their shelter. Nothing was said. They dared scarcely look into each
other's faces awhile, until Thumb caught Nod's bright, anxious little
eyes glancing under his puckered forehead from brother to brother, in
mortal fear they would soon be breaking out again. And Nod looked so
queer, and small, and anxious, and loving, and all these things so much
at once, that Thumb burst out into a roar of laughter. And there they
sat all three, rocking to and fro, holding their sides beneath the
gigantic steeps of Arakkaboa, happy and at peace together again, while
tears ran down their nose-troughs, with their shouts on shouts of
laughter.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIV


Next day the travellers were about very early, combing and grooming
themselves in the dawn-mist for the first time these many days, and
before the sun had shot his first colours across Arakkaboa, they had
eaten and drunk and set out from the valley of the languid and luscious
fruits that had been the chief cause of all their folly.

They pushed up the valley, searching anxiously the hillsides for sign of
any track or path by which they might ascend. The day was crisp and
golden with sunlight. And that evening they made their night-quarters
beside a vast frozen pool in a kind of cup of the overhanging cliffs.
Here every word they said came hollowly back in echo.

They cried, "Seelem!" "Seelem, Seelem!" replied the mocking voices.

"Ummani nâta? Still we go on?" shouted Thumb hoarsely.

"Nâta, nâta! On, on, on!" sang echo hoarselier yet.

Wind had swept clean the glassy floor. In its black lustre gleamed the
increasing moon. And after dark had fallen, mists arose and trailed in
moonlit beauty across the granite escarpments of the hills. So that
night the travellers lay in a vast tent of lovely solitude, with only
the strange noises of the ice and the whisperings of the frost to tell
poor wakeful Nod he was anything more than a little Mulgar in a dream.

Next morning early they met one of those crack-brained Môh-mulgars that
wander, eat, sleep, live, and die alone, having broken away from all
traffic and company with their friends and kinsmen. He wore about his
neck a double-coiled necklet of little bones, and wound round his middle
a plait of Cullum. He was dirty, bowed, and matted, and his eyes were
glazed as he lifted them into the sunlight in answer to Thumb's shout:

"Tell us, O Môh-mulgar, we beseech you, how shall three travellers to
the kingdom of Assasimmon find a pathway across these hills?"

The Môh-mulgar lifted both gnarled hands above his head.

"Geguslar nōōma gulmeta mūh!" replied a thick, half-brutal voice.

"What does he say?" said Nod, wondering to see him wave his spotted arms
as he wagged his crazy head.

"Well," says Thumb, "what he says is this: 'Death's at the end of _all_
paths.'"

Thimble coughed. "So it is," he said solemnly.

"Ay," said Thumb; "but what _I_ was asking was the longest way round....
A track, a path to the beautiful Valleys of Tishnar," he shouted across
to the solitary Môh-mulgar. Sorrowfully he waved his bony arms about
his head, and stooped again. "Geguslar, nōōma gulmeta mūh!" came
back his dismal answer.

Thimble, with a sign to him, laid gravely down a little heap of nuts in
the snow. And the three travellers left the old pilgrim still standing
desolate and unquestionable in the snow, watching them till they were
gone out of sight.

Coming presently after to some trees with tough, straight branches, the
travellers made themselves fresh cudgels. After which, to raise their
fallen spirits, they played hop-pole awhile in the sunshine, just as
they used to in the first days of the snow before they set out on their
travels. And about noon, when the sun stood radiant above them, they met
three Men of the Mountains, with shallow baskets on their heads, coming
down to gather Ukka-nuts in the valley. These Mulgars have long silken,
black-and-white hair and very profuse whiskers. They are sad in face,
with pouting lips, have but the meanest of thumbs, and turn their toes
in as they walk, one behind another, and sometimes in chains of a
hundred together. Thumb stood in their path, and inquired of the first
of them, as before, which way they must follow to cross the mountains.

The voice of the Man of the Mountains who answered them was so high and
weak Nod could scarcely hear his whisper. "There is no way over," he
said.

"But over we must go," said Thumb.

The other shook his head, and looked sadder than ever. And on they all
three went again, lisping softly together, but without another word to
Thumb.

"What's to be done now?" said Nod.

"Where they came down, we can go up," said Thumb.

So, the Men of the Mountains being now hidden from sight by the rocks
below, Thumb and his brothers turned up the narrow track between great
boulders of stone, by which they had come down. And glad they were of
the new staves or cudgels they had broken off. Even with the help of
these, so steep was the path that they had often to pull themselves up
by roots and jutting rocks. And gradually, besides being steep, the way
grew so narrow that they were simply walking on a ledge of rock not more
than two Mulgar paces wide. And for giddiness Nod nearly fell flat when
by chance he turned his eyes and looked down to where, far below, a
frozen torrent gleamed faintly amid huge boulders that looked from this
height no bigger than pebble-stones.

It made him giddy even to keep his eyes fixed on the narrowing path
before him, and shuffle up, up, up.

Suddenly, Thumb, who was wheezing and panting a few paces in front, came
to a standstill.

"What is it, Thumb?" said Nod.

"Why do you stop, Nod?" said Thimble, who was last of all.

"Look, look!" said Thumb.

They slowly raised their eyes, and not a hundred paces beyond them, on
the same narrow ledge of rock against the deep blue sky, came slowly
winding down thirty at least of these same meagre and hairy Men of the
Mountains, a few with long staves in their hands, and every one with his
long tufted tail over his shoulder and a round shallow basket on his
head. These Men of the Mountains have very weak eyes; and it was not
until they were come close that they perceived the three travellers
standing on their mountain-path. The first stopped, then he that was
next, and so on, until they looked like a long black-and-white
caterpillar, clinging to the precipice, with tiny tufts waving in the
air.

Thumb raised his hand as if in peace. "We are, sirs, strangers to these
rocks and hills. After the shade of Munza, our eyes dizzy with the
heights. And we walk, journeying to the Courts of Assasimmon, in great
danger of falling. How, then, shall we pass by?"

They heard a faint, shrill whispering all along the hairy row. Then the
first of the Men of the Mountains came quite close, and told the three
brothers to lie down flat on their faces, and he and his thirty would
all walk gently over them. "But to go on has no end," he said, "and the
travellers had better far turn back."

At this Thumb grew angry. "What does the old grey-beard mean?" he
coughed out of the corner of his mouth. "Mulla-mulgars stoop on their
faces to no one. Do you lie down on yours."

The old Mountain-mulgar blinked. "We are thirty; you are three," he
said. Thumb laughed.

"We are strangers to Arakkaboa, O Man of the Mountains. And we fear to
lie down, lest we never rise up again." At this civil speech the old
Mulgar went shuffling back to the others.

And, to Nod's astonishment, he presently saw him take his long staff of
tough, sinewy wood, and thrust it into a little crevice of the rock,
even with the path, so that about a third of its length overhung the
precipice. Meanwhile, another of these Mountain-mulgars had in the same
way thrust his staff into the rock a little farther down. The first Man
of the Mountains, who was, perhaps by half a span, taller than the rest,
took firm hold of the end of his staff with his long-fingered but almost
thumbless hands, and lightly swung himself down over the precipice. The
next scrambled down over his shoulders until he swung by his leader's
heels; the next followed, and so on. Three such Mulgar strings presently
hung down from their staves over the abyss. And there being thirty Men
of the Mountains in all, each string consisted of ten. [For this reason
some call these Mountain-mulgars Caterpillar or Ladder Mulgars.]

When they were all thus quietly dangling, their leader bade Thumb
advance. Stepping warily over the little heaps of baskets, this the
brothers did. But as Nod passed each string in turn, and saw it swinging
softly over the sheer precipice, and all the ten faces with pale eyes
blinking sadly up at him out of their fluff of hair, he thought he
should certainly be toppled over and dashed to pieces. At last, however,
all three were safely passed by. But the rocky ledge was here so narrow
that Thimble could not even turn himself about to thank the
Mountain-mulgars for their courtesy, nor to watch them climb back one by
one to their mountain-path again.

On and on, up, ever up, climbed the ribbon-like path winding about the
granite flanks of Kush. Once Nod lifted up his face, and saw in one
swift glimpse the glittering peaks and crest of the mountains rising in
beauty, crowned with snow, out of the vast sun-shafted precipices. He
hastily shut his eyes, and his knees trembled. But there could be no
turning back now. He followed on close behind his fat, panting brother,
until suddenly Thumb leapt back to a standstill, shouting in a voice of
fear: "O ho, ho! Illa ulla, illa ulla! O ho, ho!"

"O Thumb, why do you call 'ho!' like that?" said Nod anxiously.

"Back, back!" Thumb cried; "du steepa datz."

Nod stooped low on the smooth rock, and under the tatters of Thumb's
metal-hooked coat stared out between his brother's bandy legs. He simply
looked out of that hairy window straight into the empty air. They stood
like peering cormorants at the cliff's edge. The path had come to an
end.

Thumb whined softly and coughed, and a faint steam rose up from his
body. "We must go back," he barked huskily.

"Yes, brother," said Thimble softly; "but I cannot go back. If I turn,
down I go. But if you two can turn, down go will I."

"Tishnar, O Tishnar," cried Nod in terror, "the hills are dancing."

"Softly, softly, child!" said Thumb. "It is only your giddy eyes
rolling. What's more," he said, pretending to laugh, "those old hairy
Men of the Mountains, even if only Meermuts, _must_ have come from
somewhere. Where they came from we can go to. O and Ahôh!" he called.

"Why do you call 'Ahôh!' Thumb?" whispered Nod, with tight-shut eyes.

"Both together, Thimbulla," muttered Thumb. "Ahôh, ahôh, ahôh!" they
bawled.

Their voices sounded small and far-away. Only a bird screamed in answer
from the chasm beneath. The sun blazed shadowlessly over the peak of
Kush upon the three Mulgars, standing motionless, pressed close against
the steaming rock. To Nod the minutes crawled like hours, while he
crouched sick and trembling, clutching Thumb's rags to keep him from
falling.

"Thimble, my brother," at last called Thumb softly, "could you, if
little Nod twisted himself round, straddle your legs enough to let him
creep through? We old gluttonous fellows were never meant for
mountain-climbing. And standing here over the great misty pot----" But
just then it seemed to Thumb he felt, light as the wind, something
softly pluck at his wool hat. Very, very slowly, and without a word, he
lifted his head and looked up--looked straight up into the sorrowful
hairy face of a Man of the Mountains dangling, the last of a long chain,
from a rocky parapet above.

"Why?" says Thumb, looking into his face. "What then?"

"Up, up!" said he, in a thin, lisping Munza-tongue, making a step or
loop of his long fringed arms.

This, then, was the stairs or ladder on which the travellers must climb
into safety. But Thumb could barely touch him with the tips of his
fingers. He stood in doubt, staring up. And presently down that living
rope of Mulgars yet another Man of the Mountains softly descended, and
his arms just reached Thumb's elbows.

"Tread gently, Mulla-mulgar," said this last, with a doleful smile. "You
are fat, and our ladder is slender."

Thumb, with one white, doglike glance into the deeps, took firm hold,
and slowly, heavily, he climbed on from trembling Mulgar to trembling
Mulgar till at length he reached the top.

"Now, Nizza-neela," said the last Man of the Mountains, "it is your
turn." Up clambered Nod after Thumb, groping carefully with the palms of
his feet from hairy loop to loop. But he was glad that the Men of the
Mountains, as their custom generally is, dangled with their faces to the
rock, and could not see into his eyes.

At last all three were safely up, and found themselves on a wide,
smooth, shelving ledge of the mountain, about fifty Mulgar paces wide,
with here and there a tree or tuft of grass, and to the right a cascade
of ice, roped with icicles, streaming from the heights above. But what
most Nod blinked in wonder at were the small white mushroom houses of
these Mountain-mulgars. More than a hundred of them were here, standing
like snow-white beehives in the glare of the sun, each with its low
round door, from which, here and there, a baby Mulgar, with short,
fleecy, and cane-coloured whiskers, stood on its fours, peeping at the
strangers. When they were all three safely landed, one of the Men of the
Mountains led them between the beehive houses to a cool, shadowy cavern
in the mountain-side. There he bade them sit down, while others brought
them a kind of thin, sour cheese and a mess of crushed and mouldy
Ukka-nuts. For these Arakkaboan Mulgars will not so much as look at a
nut fresh and crisp; it must be green and furred to please their taste.
And while the travellers sat nibbling a little meanly of the nuts and
cheese, Thumb told the Men of the Mountains as best he could in the
Munza tongue who they were, and why they were come wandering in
Arakkaboa.

When Thumb in his talk made mention of the name of Tishnar, the
Mountain-mulgars that sat round them in a circle bobbed low, till the
hair of their faces touched the cavern floor.

"The Valleys of Assasimmon lie far from here," said the first
Mountain-mulgar in a shrill, thin voice. "And the Men of the Mountains
walk no mountain-paths beyond the peak of Zut; nor have we ever dangled
our ropes into the Ummuz-groves of Tishnar. I do not even know the way
thither. It would have been go thin and come back fat, O Mulla-mulgars,
if I did. Rest and sleep now, travellers. We will bring you to the
Mulla-moona-mulgar [that is, Lord, or Captain] of Kush when he awakes
from his 'glare.'"

This "glare," or "shine," is the name of the Mountain-mulgars give to
the sleep they take in the middle of the day. Some little while before
"no-shadow," as they call it, or noonday, they creep into their mushroom
houses and sleep till evening begins to settle. So weak have their eyes
become (or are, by nature) that they rarely venture out by day to go
nut-gathering in the valleys. And often then, even, many go bandaged,
keeping touch merely with their tails. It was in the midst of this
noonday sleep or glare that the travellers had roused them with their
halloo. At evening they awake, and when the moon is clear their ladders
may be seen near and far drooping over the precipices. And they go
walking with soft, shambling steps from ledge to ledge. Even the least
of them have no fear of any height. Their children of an evening will
sit and eat their suppers, their spindle legs dangling over a depth so
extreme that no Munza-mulgar could see to the bottom.

Left alone, the Mulla-mulgars, who had been climbing many hours now, and
felt stiff in legs and back, were glad to roll themselves over in the
flealess sand of the cavern, and soon were all three asleep.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XV


When Nod opened his eyes beneath the vast blue arch of the cavern, not a
sign of the Men of the Mountains was to be seen. He sat for awhile
watching his brothers humped up in sleep on the floor, and wondering
rather dismally when they should have done with their troubles and come
to the palace of their Uncle Assasimmon. He was blained and footsore;
his small bones stuck out beneath his furry skin, his hands were cracked
and scorched. And the keen high air of Arakkaboa made him gasp at every
breath.

When Thumb awoke they sat quietly mumbling and talking together a while.
Beyond the mouth of the cavern stood the beehive-houses of the
Mountain-mulgars, each in its splash of lengthening shadow. Day drew on
to evening. An eagle squalled in space. Else all was still; no living
thing stirred. For these Men of the Mountains have no need to keep
watch. They sleep secure in their white huts. None can come in, and
none go out but first they must let down their ladders. Thumb scrambled
up, and he and Nod hobbled off softly together to where the cataract
hung like a shrine of hoarfrost in pillars of green ice from the frozen
snows above. The evening was filled with light of the colour of a
flower. Even the snow that capped the mountains was faintest violet and
rose, and far in the distance, between the peaks of Zut and misty Solmi,
stretched a band of darkest purple, above which the risen moon was
riding in pale gold. And Nod knew that there, surely, must be Battle's
Sea. He pointed Thumb to it, and the two Mulgars stood, legs bandy,
teeth shining, eyes fixed. Nod gazed on it bewitched, till it seemed he
almost saw the foam of its league-long billows rolling, and could catch
in his thin round ear the roar and surge Battle had so often told him
of. "Ohé! if my Oomgar were but with me now!" he thought. "How would his
eyes stare to see his friend the sea!"

But the Men of the Mountains were now bestirring themselves. They came
creeping, lean and hairy, out of their mushroom houses. Some fetched
water, some looped down over the brink by which the travellers had come
up. Some clambered up into little dark horseshoe courts cut in the rock
like martins' holes in sand, and came down carrying sacks or suchlike
out of their nut pantries and cheese-rooms. Some, too, of the elders sat
combing their long beards with a kind of teasel that grows in the
valleys, while their faint voices sounded in their gossiping like
hundreds of grasshoppers in a meadow. Nod watched them curiously. Even
the faces of quite the puny Mountain-mulgars were sad, with round and
feeble eyes. And he couldn't help nudging Thumb to look at these tiny
creatures gravely combing their hairy chops--for all had whiskers, from
the brindled and grey, whose hair fell below their knees, to the mouse
and cane coloured babies lying in basins or cradles of Ollaconda-bark,
kicking their toes towards the brightening stars.

The moonlight dwelt in silver on every crag. And, like things so
beautiful that they seem of another world, towered the mountains around
them, clear as emeralds, and crowned with never-melting snow.

Thimble, when he awoke, was fevered and aching. The heights had made his
head dizzy, and the mountain cheese was sickly and faint. He lay at full
length, with wandering eyes, refusing to speak. So, when the Mulla-moona
sent for the three travellers, only Thumb and Nod went together. He was
old, thin-haired and thick-skinned, and rather fat with eating of
cheese; he wore a great loose hat of leopard-skin on his head. And he
looked at them with his eyes wizened up as if they were creatures of no
account. And he asked one of the Mountain-mulgars who stood near, Who
were these strangers, and by whose leave they had come trespassing on
the hill-walks of the Mountain-mulgars. "Munza is your country," he
said. "The leaves are never still with you, thieves and gluttons,
squealing and fighting and swinging by your tails!"

Thumb opened his mouth at this. "We are three, and you are many, Old Man
of the Mountains," he barked, "but keep a civil tongue with us, for all
that. We are neither thieves nor gluttons. We fight, oh yes, when it
pleases us. But having no tails, we do not swing by them. We are
Mulla-mulgars, my brothers and I, and we go to the kingdom of our
father's brother, Assasimmon, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar. He is a
Prince, O Mulla-moona, who has more slaves in his palace and more
Ukka-trees in the least of his seventy-seven gardens than your royal
whiskers have hairs! On, then, we go! But be not afraid,
Mulla-moona-mulgar. We will leave a few small stones of Arakkaboa behind
us. But whether you will or whether you won't, on we go until the Harp
sounds. Then our Meermuts will Tishnar welcome, and bid wander over
these her mountains, never hungry, never thirsty, never footsore, with
sweet-smelling lanterns to light us, and striped Zevveras to carry us,
and gongs to make music. But if we live, Chief Mulgar of Kush, we will
remember your words, I and my brother Ummanodda Nizza-neela, for he
shall breathe them into a little book in the Zbaffle Oomgar's tongue for
Prince Assasimmon to mock at in his Ummuz-fields."

Nod listened in wonder to this palaver. Had he, then, been talking in
his sleep, that Thumb knew all about the Oomgar's little fat magic-book?
The old Mountain-mulgar sat solemnly blinking, fingering the tassel of
his long tail. He was a doleful and dirty fellow, and very sly.

"Why," he said at last, "I did but speak Munza fashion. Scratch if you
itch, traveller. Even an Utt can grow angry. As for writing my words in
the Oomgar's tongue, that is magic, and I understand it not. Rest in the
cool of the shadow of Kush a little, and to-morrow my servants shall
lead you as far across Arakkaboa as they know the way. But this I will
tell you: Beyond Zut my paths go not." He raised his pale eyes softly.
"But then, Meermuts need no paths, Mulla-mulgars."

Thumb laughed. "All in good time, Prince," he said, showing his teeth.
"I begin to get an itching for this Zut. We will rest only one day. The
Mulla-mulgar Thimbulla has a poor stomach for your green cheese. We will
journey on to-morrow."

The Mulla-moona then called an old Mulgar who stood by, whose name was
Ghibba, and bade him take a rope (that is, about twenty) of the
Mountain-mulgars with him to show the travellers the secret "walks" and
passes across their country to the border round Zut. "After that," he
said, turning sourly to Thumb, "though your Meermuts were three hundred
and not three, and your Uncle, King Assasimmon, had more palaces than
there are nuts on an Ukka-tree, I could help you no more. Sulâni, O
Mulla-mulgars, and may Tishnar, before she scatters your bones, sweeten
your tempers!"

And at that the old Mountain-man curled his tail over his shoulder and
shut his eyes.

When Thumb and Nod came into the great cavern again to Thimble, they
found him helpless with pain and fever. He could not even lift his head
from his green pillow. His eyes glowed in their bony hollows. And when
Thumb stooped over him he screamed, "Gunga! Gunga!" as if in fear.

Thumb turned and looked at Nod. "We shall have to carry him, Ummanodda,"
he said. "If he eats any more of their mouldy nuts and cheese our
brother will die in these wild mountains. They must be sad stomachs that
thrive on meat gone green with age. And now the physic is gone, and
where shall we find more in these great hills of ice? We must carry
him--we must carry him, Nodnodda."

Then Ghibba, who was standing near, understanding a little of what Thumb
said, though he had spoken low in Mulgar-royal, called four of his
twenty. And together they made a kind of sling or hammock or pallet out
of their strands of Cullum, and cushioned it with hair and moss. For
once every year these Mulgars shave all the hair off their bodies, and
lie in chamber until it is grown again. By this means even the very old
keep sleek and clean. With this hair they make a kind of tippet, also
cushions and bedding of all sorts. It is a curious custom, but each,
growing up, follows his father, and so does not perceive its oddness.
Into this litter, then, they laid Thimble, and lifted him on to their
shoulders by ropes at the corners, plaited thick, so as not to chafe the
bearers. Then, the others laden with great faggots of wood and torches,
bags of nuts and cheese, and skin bottles of milk, they passed through
an arch in the wall of the cavern, and the travellers set out once more.
All the Men of the Mountains came out with their little ones in the
starlight and torch-flare to see them go. Even the old chief squinnied
sulkily out of his hut, and spat on the ground when they were gone.

The Mulgar-path on the farther side of this arch was so wide that here
and there trees hung over it with frost-tasselled branches. And a rare
squabbling the little Mountain-owls made out of their holes in the rock
to see the travellers' torches passing by. First walked six of the Men
of the Mountains, two by two. Then came Thimble, tossing and gibbering
on his litter. Close behind the litter followed Ghibba, walking between
Thumb and Nod. And last, talking all together in their thin grasshopper
voices, the other ten Mountain-mulgars with more bags, more faggots, and
more burning torches. It was, as I have said, clear and starry weather.
Far below them the valleys lay, their blackness fleeced with mist; high
above them glittered the quiet ravines of ice and snow. So cold had it
fallen again, Nod huddled himself close in his sheep's-jacket, buzzing
quiet songs while he waddled along with his stick. So all night they
walked without resting, except to change the litter-bearers.

When dawn began to stir, they came to where the Mulgar-path widened
awhile. Here many rock-conies dwelt that have, as it were, wings of skin
with which they leap as if they flew. And here the travellers doused
their torches, set Thimble down, and made breakfast. While they all sat
eating together, on a narrow pass beneath them wound by another of the
long-haired companies of the Men of the Mountains. From upper path to
lower was about fifteen Mulgars deep, for that is how they measure their
heights. All these Mulgars were laden with a kind of fresh green seaweed
heaped up on their shallow head-baskets, and were come three days'
journey from the sea from fetching it. This seaweed they eat in their
soup, or raw, as a relish or salad. Perhaps they pit it against their
cheese. Whether or no, its salt and refreshing savour rose up into the
air as they walked. And Nod sniffed it gladly for simple friendship and
memory of his master Battle.

Breakfast done, the snow-bobbins hopped down to pick up the crumbs.
These little tufty birds, of the size of a plump bull-finch, but pure
white, with coral eyes, hop among the Mountain-mulgar troops wheresoever
they go, having a great fancy for their sour cheese-crumbs.

The Men of the Mountains then hung up on their rods or staves a kind of
thick sheet or shadow-blanket, as they call it, woven of goats' wool and
Ollaconda-fibre, under which they all hid themselves from the glare of
the over-riding sun. Nod, too, and Thumb sat down in close shade beside
Thimble's litter, and slept fitfully, tired out with their night-march,
but anxious in the extreme for their brother.

Towards about three, as we should say, or when the sun was three parts
across his bridge, having wound up their shadow-blankets and made all
shipshape, the little company of grey and brown Mulgars set out once
more. Thimble, who had lain drowsy and panting, but quiet, during the
day, now began to toss and rave as if in fear. His cries rang piercing
and sorrowful against these stone walls, and even the hairy
Mountain-men, who carried him in such patience slung between them, grew
at last weary of his clamour, and shook his litter when he cried out, as
if, indeed, that might quiet him.

Nod stumped on for a long time in silence, listening to his brother's
raving. "O Thumb, what should we do," he broke out at last--"what should
we do, you and me, if Thimble died?"

Thumb grunted. "Thimble will not die, little brother."

"But how can you know, Thumb? Or do you say it only to comfort me?"

"I never could tell how I know, Ummanodda; but know I do, and there's an
end."

"I suppose we shall get to Tishnar's Valleys--in time?" said Nod, half
to himself.

"The Nizza-neela is downcast with long travel," said Ghibba.

"Ay," muttered Thumb, "and being a Mulla-mulgar, he does not show it."

Nod turned his head away, blinked softly, shrugged up his jacket, but
made no answer. And Thumb, in his kindness, and perhaps to ease his own
spirits, too, broke out in his great seesaw voice into the Mulgar
journey-song. High above the squabbling of the little Mountain-owls,
high above the remote thunder of the surging waters in the ravine, into
the clear air they raised their hoarse voices together:

    "In Munza a Mulgar once lived alone,
     And his name it was Dubbuldideery, O;
     With none to love him, and loved by none,
     His hard old heart it grew weary, O,
         Weary, O weary, O weary.

    "So he up with his cudgel, he on with his bag
     Of Manaka, Ukkas, and Keeri, O;
     To seek for the waters of 'Old-Made-Young,'
     Went marching old Dubbuldideery, O
         Dubbuldi-dubbuldi-deery.

    "The sun rose up, and the sun sank down;
     The moon she shone clear and cheery, O,
     And the myriads of Munza they mocked and mopped
     And mobbed old Dubbuldideery, O,
         Môh Mulgar Dubbuldideery.

    "He cared not a hair of his head did he,
     Not a hint of the hubbub did hear he, O,
     For the roar of the waters of 'Old-Made-Young'
     Kept calling of Dubbuldideery, O,
         Call--calling of Dubbuldideery.

    "He came to the country of 'Catch Me and Eat Me'--
     Not a fleck of a flicker did fear he, O,
     For he knew in his heart they could never make mince-meat
     Of tough old Dubbuldideery, O,
         Rough, tough, gruff Dubbuldideery.

    "He waded the Ooze of Queen Better-Give-Up,
     Dim, dank, dark, dismal, and dreary, O,
     And, crunch! went a leg down a Cockadrill's throat,
     'What's _one_?' said Dubbuldideery, O,
         Undauntable Dubbuldideery.

    "He cut him an Ukka crutch, hobbled along,
     Till Tishnar's sweet river came near he, O--
     The wonderful waters of 'Old-Made-Young,'
     A-shining for Dubbuldideery, O,
         Wan, wizened old Dubbuldideery.

    "He drank, and he drank--and he drank--and he--drank:
     No more was he old and weary, O,
     But weak as a babby he fell in the river,
     And drownded was Dubbuldideery, O,
         Drown-ded was Dubbuldideery!"

    [Illustration: WITH STICKS AND STAVES AND FLARING TORCHES THEY
    TURNED ON THE FIERCE BIRDS THAT CAME SWEEPING AND SWIRLING OUT
    OF THE DARK.]

It was a long song, and it lasted a long time, and so many were the
verses, that at last even the Men of the Mountains caught up the crazy
Mulgar drone and wheezily joined in, too. A very dismal music it was--so
dismal, indeed, that many of the eagles who make their nests or eyries
in the crevices and ledges of the topmost crags of Arakkaboa flew
screaming into the air, sweeping on their motionless wings between the
stars over the echoing precipices.

The travellers had set to the last verse of the Journey-Song more
lustily than ever, when of a sudden one of these eagles, crested, and
bronze in the torchlight, swooped so close in its anger of the voices
that it swept off Thumb's wool hat. In his haste he heedlessly struck at
the shining bird with his staff or cudgel. Its scream rose sudden and
piercing as it soared, dizzily wheeling in its anger, at evens with the
glassy peak of Kush. Too late the Men of the Mountains cried out on
Thumb to beware. In an instant the night was astir, the air forked with
wings. From every peak the eagles swooped upon the Mulgars. And soon the
travellers were fighting wildly to beat them off. They hastily laid poor
Thimble down in his sling and covered up his eyes from the tumult with a
shadow-blanket. And with sticks and staves and flaring torches they
turned on the fierce birds that came sweeping and swirling out of the
dark upon them on bristling feathers, with ravening beaks and talons.
But against Thumb the eagles fought most angrily for his insult to their
Prince, hovering with piercing battle-cry, their huge wings beating a
dreadful wind upon his cowering head. Nod, while he himself was
buffeting, ducking and dodging, could hear Thumb breathing and coughing
and raining blows with his great cudgel. The moon was now sliding
towards the mouth of Solmi's Valley, and her beams streamed aslant on
the hosts of the birds. Wherever Nod looked, the air was aflock with
eagles. His hand was torn and bleeding, a great piece of his
sheep's-jacket had been plucked out, and still those moon-gilded wings
swooped into the torchlight, beaks snapped almost in his face, and
talons clutched at him.

Suddenly a scream rose shrill above all the din around him. For a moment
the birds hung hovering, and then Nod perceived one of the biggest of
the eagles struggling in mid-air with something stretched and wrestling
upon its back. It was a Man of the Mountains floating there in space,
while the maddened eagle rose and fell, and poised itself, and shook and
beat its wings, vainly striving to tear him off. And now many other of
the eagles wheeled off from the Mulgars and swept in frenzy to and fro
over this struggling horse and rider, darting upon them, beating the
dying Mulgar with their wings, screaming their war-song, until at last,
gradually, lower and lower they all sank out of the moonlight into the
shadow of the valley, and were lost to sight. The few birds that
remained were soon beaten off. Five lay dead in their beautiful feathers
on the pass. And the breathless and bleeding Mulgars gathered together
on this narrow shelf of the precipice to bind up their wounds and rest
and eat. But three of them were nowhere to be found. They made no
answer, though their friends called and called, again and again, in
their shrill reedy voices. For one in fighting had stumbled and toppled
over, torch in hand, from the path, one had been slit up by an eagle's
claw, and one had been carried off by the eagles.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVI


And now that the moon was near her setting, dark grew the air. The Men
of the Mountains had at last ceased to call their lost companions, and
on either side of the path were breaking up their faggots and building
fires, leaving two wide spaces beneath the beetling rock for their
encampment between the fires. Nod, sitting beside Thimble's litter,
watched them for some time, and presently he fancied he heard a distant
howling, not from the darkness below, but seemingly from the heights
above the Mulgar-pass. He rose and limped along to Ghibba, who was busy
about the fires. "Why are you heaping up such large fires?" he said,
"and whose, Man of the Mountains, are those howlings I heard from the
mountain-tops?"

Ghibba's face was scorched and bleeding; one of his long eyebrows was
nearly torn off. "The fires and the howls are cousins, little Mulgar,"
he said. "The screams of the golden-folk have roused the wolves, and if
we do not light big fires they will come down in packs along their
secret paths to devour us. It is a good thing to fight bravely, but it's
a better not to have to fight at all."

Nod came back and told this news to Thumb, who was sitting with a great
strip of his jacket bound round his head like a Turk's turban. "It is
good news, brother," he said--"it is good news. What stories we shall
have to tell when we are old!"

"But two of the hairy ones are dead," said Nod, "and one is slipping,
they say, from his second sleep."

"Then," said Thumb, looking softly over the valley, "they need fight no
more."

Nod sat down again beside Thimble's litter and touched his hand. It was
dry and burning hot. He heard him gabbling, gabbling on and on to
himself, and every now and again he would start up and gaze fixedly into
the night. "No, Thimble, no," Nod would say. "Lie back, my brother. It
is neither the Harp-strings nor our father's Zevveras; it is only the
little mountain-wolves barking at the icicles."

On either side of their camping-place he heard yelp answering to yelp,
and then a long-drawn howl far above his head. He began to think, too,
he could see, as it were, small green and golden marshlights wandering
along the little paths. And, watching them where he sat quietly on his
heels in a little hollow of the rock, it brought back, as if this were
but a dream he was in, the twangle of Battle's Juddie, the restless
fretting and howling of Immanâla's Jaccatrays. As the Moona-mulgar's
fires mounted higher, great shadows sprang trembling up the mountains,
and tongues of flame cast vague shafts of light across the shadowy
abyss; while, stuck along the wall in sconces of the rock, a dozen
torches smoked.

Thumb grunted. "They'd burn all Munza up with fires like these," he
muttered. "Little wolves need only little fires." But Thumb did not know
the ferocity of these small mountain-wolves. They are meagre and
wrinkle-faced, with prick ears and rather bushy tails. In winter they
grow themselves thick coats as white as snow, except upon their legs,
which are short-haired and grey, with long tapping claws. And they are
fearless and very cunning creatures. Nod could now see them plainly in
the nodding flamelight, couched on their haunches a few paces beyond the
fires, and along the galleries above, with gleaming eyes, scores and
scores of them. And now the eagles were returning to their eyries from
their feasting in the valley, and though they swept up through the air
mewing and peering, they dared not draw near to the great blaze of fire
and torch, but screamed as they ascended, one to the other, until the
wolves took up an answer, barking hard and short, or with long mournful
ululation.

When at last they fell quiet, then the Men of the Mountains began
wailing again for their lost comrades. They sit with their eyes shut,
resting on their long narrow hands, their faces to the wall, and sing
through their noses. First one takes up a high lamentable note, then
another, and so on, faster and faster, for all the world like a faint
and distant wind in the hills, until all the voices clash together,
"Tish--naehr!" Then, in a little, breaks out the shrillest in solo
again, and so they continue till they weary.

Nod listened, his face in his hands, but so faint and fast sang the
voices he could only catch here and there the words of their drone, if
words there were. He touched Thumb's shoulder. "These hairy fellows are
singing of Tishnar!" he said.

Thumb grunted, half asleep.

"Who taught them of Tishnar?" Nod asked softly.

Thumb turned angrily over. "Oh, child!" he growled, "will you never
learn wisdom? Sleep while you can, and let Thumb sleep too! To-morrow we
may be fighting again."

But though the Ladder-mulgars soon ceased to wail, and, except for two
who were left to keep watch and to feed the fires, laid themselves down
to sleep, Nod could not rest. The mountains rose black and unutterably
still beneath the stars. Up their steep sides enormous shadows jigged
around the fires. Sometimes an eagle squawked on high, nursing its
wounds. And whether he turned this way or that way he still saw the
little wolves huddled close together, their pointed heads laid on their
lean paws, uneasily watching. And he longed for morning. For his heart
lay like a stone in him in grief for his brother Thimble. A little dry
snow harboured in the crevices of the rocks. He filled his hands with
it, and laid it on poor Thimble's head and moistened his lips. Then he
walked softly along past the sleeping Mulgars towards the fire.

Where should we all be now, he thought, if the eagles had come in the
morning? On paths narrow as those there was not even room enough to
brandish a cudgel. The fire-watcher raised his sad countenance and
peered through his hair at Nod.

"What is it in your mouldy cheese, Man of the Mountains, that has
poisoned my brother?" said Nod.

The Mulgar shook his head. "Maybe it is something in the Mulla-mulgar,"
he answered. "It is very good cheese."

"Will morning soon be here?" said Nod, gazing into the fire.

The Mulgar smiled. "When night is gone," he answered.

"Why do these mountain-wolves fear fire?" asked Nod.

The Mulgar shook his head. "Questions, royal traveller, are easier than
answers," he said. "They _do_."

He caught up a firebrand, and threw it with all his strength beyond the
fire. It fell sputtering on the ledge, and instantly there rose such a
yelping and snarling the chasm re-echoed. Yet so brave are these
snow-wolves one presently came venturing pitapat, pitapat, along the
frosty gallery, and very warily, with the tip of his paw, poked and
pushed at it until the burning stick toppled and fell over, down, down,
down, down, till, a gliding spark, it vanished into the torrent below.
The Mountain-mulgar looked back over his shoulder at Nod, but said
nothing.

Nod's eyes went wandering from head to head of the shadowy pack. "Is it
far now to my uncle, Prince Assasimmon's? Is it far to the Valleys?" he
said in a while.

"Only to the other side of death," said the watchman. "Come
Nōōmanossi, we shall walk no more."

"Do you mean, O Man of the Mountains," said Nod, catching his breath,
"that we shall never, never get there alive?" The watchman hobbled over
and threw an armful of wood on to the fire.

"'Never' shares a big bed with 'Once,' Mulla-mulgar," he said, raking
the embers together with a long forked stick. "But we have no Magic."

Nod stared. Should he tell this dull Man of the Mountains to think no
more of death, seeing that _he_, Ummanodda himself, had magic? Should he
let him dazzle his eyes one little moment with his Wonderstone? He
fumbled in the pocket of his sheep-skin coat, stopped, fumbled again.
His hair rose stiff on his scalp. He shivered, and then grew burning
hot. He searched and searched again. The Mulgar eyed him sorrowfully.
"What ails you, O nephew of a great King?" he said in his faint, high
voice. "Fleas?"

Nod stared at him with flaming eyes. He could not think nor speak. His
Wonderstone was gone. He turned, dropped on his fours, sidled
noiselessly back to Thimble's litter, and sat down.

How had he lost it? When? Where? And in a flash came back to his
outwearied, aching head remembrance of how, in the height of the
eagle-fighting, there had come the plunge of a lean, gaping beak and the
sudden rending of his coat. Vanished for ever was Tishnar's Wonderstone,
then. The Valleys faded, Nōōmanossi drew near.

He sat there with chattering teeth, his little skull crouching in his
wool, worn out with travel and sleeplessness, and the tears sprang
scalding into his eyes. What would Thumb say now? he thought bitterly.
What hope was left for Thimble? He dared not wake them, but stooped
there like a little bowed old man, utterly forlorn. And so sitting,
cunning Sleep, out of the silence and darkness of Arakkaboa, came
softly hovering above the troubled Nizza-neela; he fell into a shallow
slumber. And in this witching slumber he dreamed a dream.

He dreamed it was time gone by, and that he was sitting on his log again
with his master, Battle, just as they used to sit, beside their fire.
And the Oomgar had a great flat book covering his knees. Nod could see
the book marvellously clearly in his dream--a big book, white as a dried
palm-leaf, that stretched across the sailor knee to knee. And the sailor
was holding a little stick in his hand, and teaching him, as he used in
a kind of sport to do, his own strange "Ningllish" tongue. Before,
however, the sailor had taught the little Mulgar only in words, by
sound, never in letters, by sight. But now in Nod's dream Battle was
pointing with his little prong, and the Mulgar saw a big straddle-legged
black thing in the book strutting all across the page.

"Now," said the Oomgar, and his voice sounded small but clear, "what's
that, my son?"

But Nod in his dream shook his head; he had never seen the strange shape
before.

"Why, that's old 'A,' that is," said Battle; "and what did old
straddle-legs 'A' go for to do? What did 'A' do, Nod Mulgar?"

And Nod thought a voice answered out of his own mouth and said: "A ...
Yapple-pie."

"Brayvo!" cried the Oomgar. And there, sure enough, filling plump the
dog's-eared page, was a great dish something like a gourd cut in half,
with smoke floating up from a little hole in the middle.

"A--Apple-pie," repeated the sailor; "and I wish we had him here,
Master Pongo. And now, what's this here?" He turned the page.

Nod seemed in his dream to stand and to stare at the odd double-bellied
shape, with its long straight back, but in vain. "Bless ye, Nod Mulgar,"
said Battle in his dream, "that's old Buzz-buzz; that's that old
garden-robber--that's 'B.'"

"'B,'" squealed Nod.

"And 'B'--he bit it," said Battle, clashing his small white teeth
together and laughing, as he turned the page.

Next in the dream-book came a curled black fish, sitting looped up on
its tail. And that, the Oomgar told him, leaning forward in the
firelight, was "C"; that was "C"--crying, clawing, clutching, and
croaking for it.

Nod thought in his dream that he loved learning, and loved Battle
teaching him, but that at the word "croaking" he looked up wondering
into the sailor's face, with a kind of waking stir in his mind. What was
this "IT"? What could this "_IT_" be--hidden in the puffed-out, smoking
pie that "B" bit, and "C" cried for, and swollen "D" dashed after? And
... over went another crackling page.... The Oomgar's face seemed
strangely hairy in Nod's dream; no, not hairy--tufty, feathery; and so
loud and shrill he screamed "E," Nod all but woke up.

"'E,'" squeaked Nod timidly after him.

"And what--what--what did 'E' do?" screamed the Oomgar.

But now even in his dream Nod knew it was not the beloved face of his
sailor Zbaffle, but an angry, keen-beaked, clamouring, swooping Eagle
that was asking him the question, "'E,' 'E,' 'E'--what did 'E' do?" And
clipped in the corner of its beak dangled a thread, a shred of his
sheep's-jacket. What ever, ever did "E" do? puzzled in vain poor Nod,
with that dreadful face glinting almost in touch with his.

"Dunce! Dunce!" squalled the bird. "'E' ate it...."

"E ... ate it," seemed to be still faintly echoing on his ear in the
darkness when Nod found himself wide awake and bolt upright, his face
cold and matted with sweat, yet with a heat and eagerness in his heart
he had never known before. He scrambled up and crept along in the rosy
firelight till he came to the five dead eagles. Their carcasses lay
there with frosty feathers and fast-sealed eyes. From one to another he
crept slowly, scarcely able to breathe, and turned the carcasses over.
Over the last he stooped, and--a flock, a thread of sheep's wool dangled
from its clenched black beak. Nod dragged it, stiff and frozen, nearer
the fire, and with his knife slit open the deep-black, shimmering neck,
and there, wrapped damp and dingily in its scrap of Oomgar-paper, his
fingers clutched the Wonderstone. He hastily wrapped it up, just as it
was, in the flock of wool, and thrust it deep into his other pocket, and
with trembling fingers buttoned the flap over it. Then he went softly
back to his brothers, and slept in peace till morning.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII


When he awoke, bright day was on the mountains. The little snow-wolves
had slunk back to their holes and lairs. The fires burned low. And
Thimble lay in a sleep so quiet and profound it seemed to Nod the heart
beneath the sharp-ribbed chest was scarcely stirring. It was bitter cold
on these heights in the sunlessness of morning. And Nod was glad to sit
himself down beside one of the wood-fires to eat his breakfast of nuts,
and swallow a suppet or two of the thawed Mulgar-milk. But the Men of
the Mountains had plucked and roasted the eagles, and were squatting,
with not quite such doleful faces as usual, picking with pointed, rather
catlike teeth, the bones.

Nod could not help watching them under his eyebrows, where they sat,
with tail-tufts over their shoulders, in their fleecy hair, blinking
mildly from their pale pink eyes. For, though here and there may be seen
a Mountain-mulgar with eyes blue as the turquoise, by far the most of
them have pink, and some (but these are what the Oomgar-nuggas would
call Witch-doctors, or Fulbies) have one of either. They looked timid
and feeble enough, these Moona-mulgars, yet with what fearless fury had
they fought with the eagles! How swiftly they shambled dim-sighted along
these wrinkled precipices! Some even now were seated on the rocky verge
as easily as a Skeeto in its tree-top, their lean shanks dangling over.
But they nibbled and tugged at their slender bird-bones, and peered and
waved their long arms in faint talk; though, as their watchman had told
Nod in the firelight, they knew they were all within earshot of the
Harp.

Ghibba was sitting a little away from the others, eating with his eyes
shut.

"Are you so sleepy, Prince of the Mountains, that you keep your eyes
shut in broad day?" said Nod.

Ghibba wagged his head. "No, Mulla-mulgar, I am not sleepy; but one eye
is scorched with the fire and one a little angry with the eagles, so
that I can scarcely see at all."

"Not blind?" said Nod.

Ghibba opened his eyes, red and glittering. "Nay, twilight, not night,
little Mulgar," he answered cheerfully. "I see no more of you than a
little brown cloud against black mountains."

"But how will you walk on these narrow, icy shelves?" said Nod.

"Why," says he, "I have a tail, Mulgar-royal; and my people must lead
me.... What of the morning, Nizza-neela?"

"It is bright as hoarfrost on the slopes and tops there," said Nod,
pointing. "It dazzles Ummanodda's eyes to look. But the sun is behind
this huge black wall of ours, so here we sit cold in the shadow."

"Then we will wait," said Ghibba, "till he come walking a little higher
to melt the frost and drive away the last of the wolves."

"Man of the Mountains," said Nod presently, "would you hold me if I
crept close and put my head over the edge? I would like to see how many
Mulgars-deep we walk."

Ghibba laughed. "This path is but as other Mulgar-paths, Mulla-mulgar;
no traveller need stumble twice. But I will do as you ask me."

So Nod lay down flat on his stomach, while two of the Mountain-mulgars
clutched each a leg. He wriggled forward till head and shoulders hung
beyond the margent of the rock. He shut his eyes a moment against that
terrific steep of air, and the huge shadow of the mountain upon the deep
blue forest. All far beneath was still dark with night; only the frozen
waters of the swirling torrent palely reflected the daybreak sky. But
suddenly he shot out a lean brown paw. "Ahôh, ahôh! I say!"

The Men of the Mountains dragged him back so roughly that his broad snub
nose was scraped on the stone. "Why do you do that?" he said angrily.

"You called 'O, O!' Mulla-mulgar, and we thought you were afraid."

"Afraid! Nod? No!" said Nod. "What is there to be afraid of?"

Ghibba twitched his long grey eyebrow. "The little Mulgar asks us
riddles," he said.

"I called," said Nod, "because I spy something jutting there with a
fluff of hair in the wind that leaps the chasm, and with thin ends that
look to me like the arms and legs of a Man of the Mountains lying caught
in a bush of Tummusc."

At the sound of Nod's "Ahôh!" Thumb had come scrambling along from the
other fire, and many of the Mountain-mulgars fell flat on their faces,
and leaned peering over the precipice. But their eyes were too dim to
pierce far. They broke into shrill, eager whisperings.

"It is, perhaps, a wisp of snow, an eagle's feather, or maybe a nosegay
of frost-flowers."

"What was the name of him who fell fighting?" said Nod eagerly.

"His name was Ubbookeera," said Ghibba.

"Then," said Nod, "there he hangs."

"So be it, Eyes-of-an-Eagle," said Ghibba; "we will go down before he
melts and fetch him up." So they drove two of their long staves into a
crevice of the rocks. And Ghibba, being one of the strongest of them,
and also nearly blind, crept to the end and unwound himself down; then
one by one the rest of the Mountain-mulgars descended, till the last and
least was gone.

"Hold my legs, Thumb, my brother, that I may see what they're at," said
Nod. Thumb clutched him tight, and Nod edged on his stomach to the end
of the bending pole. He saw far down the grey string of the Men of the
Mountains dangling, but even the last of them was still twenty or thirty
Mulgars off the Tummusc-bush. He heard their shrill chirping. And
presently the first sunbeam trembled over the wall of the mountain above
them, and beamed clear into the valley. Nod wriggled back to Thumb.
"They cannot reach him," he said. "He lies there huddled up, Thumb, in a
Tummusc-bush, just as he fell."

"Why, then," said Thumb, "he must have hung dead all night. The eagles
will have picked his eyes out."

In a little while the last and least of the Mountain-mulgars crept back
over Ghibba's shoulders and scrambled on to the path. He was a little
blinking fellow, and in colour patched like damask.

"Is he dead? Is he dead? Is thy 'Messimut' dead?" said Nod, leaning his
head.

"He is dead, Mulla-mulgar, or in his second sleep," he answered.

Now, all the Mulgar beads on that strange string stood whispering and
nodding together. Ghibba presently turned away from them, and began
raking back the last smoulderings of their watch-fire.

"What will you do?" said Nod. "Why do you drag back the embers?"

"The swiftest of us is going back to bring a longer 'rope' and stronger
staves and Samarak, and, alive or dead, they will drag him up. But we go
on, Mulla-mulgar."

"Ohé," said Nod softly; "but will he not be melted by then, Prince of
the Mountains? Will not the eagle's feather be blown away? Will not the
frost flowers have melted from the bush?"

Ghibba turned his grave, hairy face to Nod.

"The Men of the Mountains will remember you in their drones,
Mulla-mulgar, for saving the life of their kinsman; they will call you
in their singing 'Mulla-mulgar Eengenares'"--that is, Royal-mulgar with
the Eyes of an Eagle.

Nod laughed. "Already am I in my brothers' thoughts Prince of Bonfires,
Noddle of Pork; if only I could see through Zut, they also might call me
Eengenares, too."

All were in haste now, binding up what remained of faggots and torches,
combing and beating themselves and quenching the fires. Soon the Mulgar
who had been chosen to return had rubbed noses and bidden them all
farewell, and had set out on his lonely journey home. Thimble still lay
in a deep sleep, and so cold after the heats of fever that they had to
muffle him twice or thrice in shadow-blankets to regain his warmth.

When they had trudged on a league or so the day began to darken with
cloud. And a thin smoke began to fume up from below. The travellers
pressed on in all haste, so fast that the tongues of the bearers of
Thimble's litter lolled between their teeth. Wind rose in scurries, and
every peak was shrouded. Unnatural gloom thickened around the lean,
straggling troop of Mulgars. And almost before they had time to drive in
their long poles, as shepherds drive in posts for their wattles, and to
swathe and bind themselves close into the sloping rock, the tempest
broke over them. A dense and tossing cloud of ice beat up on the wind,
so that soon the huddled travellers looked like nothing else than a long
low mound on the Mulgar pass, heaped high with the drifting crystals. On
every peak and crest the lightning played blue and crackling. In its
flash the air hung still, bewitched with snow-flakes. Thunder and wind
made such a clamour between them that Nod could scarcely hear himself
think. But the travellers sat mute and glum, and moved never a finger.
Such storms sweep like wild birds through these mountains of Arakkaboa,
and, like birds, are as quickly flown away. For in a little while all
was peace again and silence. And the sun broke in flames out of the pale
sky, shining in peaceful beauty upon the mountains, as if, indeed, the
snow-white Zevveras of Tishnar had passed by.

The travellers soon beat each other free of their snow, and danced and
slapped themselves warm. And now they were rejoiced to see in the
distant clearness peeping above the shoulder of Makkri that league-long
needle Moot. The pass now began to widen, and a little before noonday
they broke out into a broad and steep declivity of snow. And, seeing
that they had but lately rested themselves, and soon would be journeying
in shelter from the sun, they did not tarry for their "glare," or
middle-day sleep.

Their breath hung like smoke on the icy air. They sank at every step
wellnigh up to their middles in snow, and were all but wearied out when
at last they climbed up into a gorge cut sheer between bare walls of
rock, and so lofty on either hand that daylight scarcely trembled down
to them at the bottom.

So steep and glazed with ice was this gorge or gully that they were
compelled to tie themselves together with strands of Cullum. They laid
Thimble's litter on three long pieces of wood strapped together. Then,
Ghibba going foremost, one by one they followed the ascent after him,
stumbling and staggering, and heaving at the Cullum-rope to drag up poor
Thimble on his slippery bed.

The Men of the Mountains have bristly feet and long, hairy, hard-nailed
toes. But Thumb and Nod, with their naked soles and shorter toes, could
scarcely clutch the icy path at all, and fell so often they were soon
stiff with bruises. Worse still, there frequents in the upper parts of
these mountains a kind of witless or silly Mulgars, who are called
Obobbomans, with very long noses. And just as men use a spyglass for
sight, to magnify things and to bring things at a distance nearer, so
these Obobbomans use their prolonged noses for smell. Long before Thumb
and his company were come to their precipitous gully they had sniffed
them out. And, being as mischievous as they are dull-witted, they had
already scampered about, gathering together great heaps of stones, and
had now set themselves in a row, sniffing and chattering, along the edge
of the rock on both sides, and waited there concealed in ambush.

When the Men of the Mountains had climbed up some little way into the
gorge, and were scrambling and stumbling on the ice, these Obobbomans
began pelting them as fast as they could with their stones and snowballs
and splinters of ice. These missiles, though not very large, fell
heavily down the walls of the precipice. And soon the whole caravan of
Mulgars was brought to a standstill, they were so battered and
bewildered by the stones.

As soon as the travellers stopped, these knavish Long-noses ceased to
pelt them. So cautious and furtive are they that not a sign of them
could be distinguished by the Mulgars staring up from below, though,
indeed, a hundred or more of their thin snouts were actually protruded
over the sides of the chasm, sniffing and trembling.

"Does it always rain pebble-stones and lumps of ice in these miserable
hills?" said Thumb bitterly.

And Ghibba told him that it was the Long-nose mulgars who were molesting
them. They squatted down to breathe themselves, hoping to tire out the
Obobbomans. But the instant they stirred, down showered snowball, ice,
and stones once more. The travellers bound faggots and blankets over
their heads, and struggled on, but the faggots kept slipping loose, and
did not cover their stooping backs and buttocks. They shouted,
threatened, shook their hands towards the heights; one or two even flung
pebbles up that only bounced down upon their own heads again. It was all
in vain. They halted once more, and squatted down in despair. To add to
their misery, it was so cold in this gorge that the breath of the
Hill-mulgars froze in long icicles on their beards, and whensoever they
turned to speak to one another, or if they sneezed (as they often did in
the cold, and with the snuff-like ice-dust), their fringes tinkled like
glass. At last Ghibba, who had been sitting lost in thought of what to
be doing next, suddenly groped his way forward, and bade two of his
people sit down to their firesticks to make fire.

"What is this Whisker-face tinkering at now?" muttered Thumb. "What is
he after now? We had best have come alone."

"I know not," said Nod; "but if he can fight Noses, Thumb, as well as he
can fight Beaks, we shall soon be getting on again."

They crouched miserably in the snow, huddled up in shadow-blankets. The
Obobbomans peeped further into the ravine, chattering together, at a
loss to understand why the travellers were sitting there so still. But
at last fire came to the firesticks, and Ghibba then bade two or three
of his Mountaineers kindle torches. Whereupon he gave to each a bundle
of the eagle feathers which they had plucked from the five carcasses on
the pass, and told them to burn them piecemeal in their torches.

"Ghost of a Môh-man!" grunted Thumb sourly; "he has lost his cheesy
wits!"

With feathers fizzling, away they went again, slipping, staggering, and
straining at the rope. Down at once hailed the stones again, the
Obobbomans gambolling and squealing with delight in their silly
mischief. And now no longer little were the snowballs, for the
Long-noses all this time had been busy making big ones. These four or
five of them, shoving together, with noses laid sidelong, rolled slowly
to the edge, and pushed over. Down they came, bounding and rebounding
into the abyss, and broke into fragments on the travellers' heads. Some,
too, of the craftier of the Long-noses had mingled stones and ice in
these great balls.

Thumb groaned and sweated in spite of the cold, for he, being by far the
fattest and broadest of the travellers, received the most stones, and
stumbled and fell far more often than the rest on his clumsy feet on the
ice. Now, however, the smoke of the burning bunches of eagles' feathers
was mounting in pale blue clouds through the gorge. It was enough. At
the first sniff and savour of this evil smoke the Long-noses paused in
their mischief, coughing and sneezing. At the next sniff they paused no
longer. Away they scampered headlong, higgledy-piggledy, toppling one
over another in their haste to be gone, squealing with disgust and
horror; and the travellers at last were left in peace.

"I began to fear, O Man of the Mountains," grunted Thumb to Ghibba,
"that your wits had got frostbitten. But I am not too old nor fat to
learn wisdom."

Ghibba lifted his face and peered from under the bandage he had wound
over his sore eyes into Thumb's bruised face. "Munza or Mountains,
there's wisdom for all, brave traveller," he said. "They are very old
friends of ours, these Long-noses; they could smell out a mouse's
Meermut in the moon."

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVIII


The pass grew ever steeper, but now that the travellers were no longer
pestered by the Obobbomans they managed to struggle slowly on. And near
about sunset they had tugged their way to the top, and came out again
upon the mountain-side. They spread out their blankets and threw
themselves down, panting, bruised, and outwearied. But they made no fire
here yet, because their wood was running short, and all that they had
would be needed against the small hours of the night. They nibbled at
their blue cheese and a few cold eagle-bones, and, having cut one of
their skin-bags to pieces, broke up the frozen milk and shared the lumps
between them.

Thumb and Nod crouched down beside Thimble, who was now awake and in his
own mind. And they told him all that had happened since his megrims had
come on. He was still weak and fretful, and turned his eyes hastily from
sight of the mouldy cheese the Mountain-mulgars were nibbling. But he
sucked a few old Ukka-nuts. Then they lifted him gently, and with an arm
round Thumb's neck and a hand on Nod's shoulder, they walked him awhile
quietly in the snow.

While the brothers were thus walking friendly together, Ghibba groped
his way up to them.

"I come, Royal Travellers," he said, "to tell you that here our country
ends. Zut lies now behind us. Yonder stretches the Shadow Country, and
my people know the way no farther."

The three brothers turned their heads to look, and on their cudgel-hand,
about two leagues distant, stood Solmi; to the west, and a little in
front of them, Mōōt and Makkri. Upon the topmost edge of the
snow-slope at the foot of which they were now encamped ran a long, low
border of a kind of thorn-bush, huddling among great rocks and boulders,
resembling a little the valleys of the Babbabōōmas.

"You mean, O Man of the Mountains, whose friendship has been our very
lives to us," said Thumb, "that now we must journey on alone?"

"No, Mulla-mulgar; I mean only that here the Moona country, my people's
country, ends, and therefore that I cannot now be certain of the way to
the Valleys of Tishnar. But this I do know: that beyond here is thick
with the snares of Nōōmanossi. But if the Mulgar Princes and the
Nizza-neela Eengenares, who saved my kinsman's life, would have it so,
and are not weary of our company, then I and my people will journey on
with them till they come to an end. We know from childhood these
desolate mountains. They are our home. We eat little, drink little, and
can starve as quietly as an icicle can freeze. If need be (and I do not
boast, Mulla-mulgars), we Thin-shanks can march softly all day for many
days, and not fall by the way. We are, I think, merely Leather-men, not
meant for flesh and blood. But the Mulla-mulgars have fought with us,
and we are friends. And I myself am friend to the last sleep of the
small Prince, Nizza-neela, who has the colour of Tishnar in his eyes.
Shall it be farewell, Travellers? Or shall we journey on together?"

The brothers looked at the black and thorn-set trees, at the towering
rocks, at the wastes of the beautiful snows. They looked with
astonishment at this old, half-blind mountaineer with his lean, sinewy
arms, and hill-bent legs, and his bandaged eyes. And Thumb lifted his
hands in salutation to Ghibba, as if he were a Mulla-mulgar himself.

"Why should we lead you into strange dangers, O Man of the Mountains,"
he grunted--"maybe to death? But if you ask to come with us, if we have
only to choose, how can I and my brothers say no? We will at least be
friends who do not part while danger is near, and though we never reach
the Valley, Tishnar befriends the Meermuts of the brave. Let us, then,
go on together."

So Ghibba went back to his people, and told them what Thumb had said.
And being now agreed together, they all hobbled off but three, who were
left to guard the bundles, to break and cut down wood, and to see if
perhaps among the thorns grew any nut-trees. But they found none; and
for their pains were only scratched and stung by these waste-trees which
bear a deadly poison in their long-hooked thorns. This poison, like the
English nettle, causes a terrible itch to follow wherever the thorns
scratch. So that the travellers could get no peace from the stinging and
itching except by continually rubbing the parts in snow wherever the
thorns had entered.

And Nod, while they were stick-gathering, kept close to Ghibba.

"Tell me, Prince of the Mountains," he said, "what are these nets of
Nōōmanossi of which you spoke to my brother Thumb? What is there
so much to fear?"

Ghibba had sat himself down in the snow to pluck a thorn out of his
foot. "I will tell the Prince a tale," he said, stooping over his
bundle.

"Long time ago came to our mountains a Mulgar travelling alone. My
kinsmen think oftener of him than any stranger else, because,
Mulla-mulgar, he taught us to make fire. He was wayworn and full of
courage, but he was very old. And he, too, was journeying to the Valleys
of Tishnar. But he was, too, a silent Mulgar, never stirred his tongue
unless in a kind of drone at evening, and told us little of himself
except in sleep."

"What was he like?" said Nod. "Was he mean and little, like me, or tall
and bony, like my brother Thimble, or fat, like the Mulla-mulgar, my
eldest brother, Thumb?"

"He was," said Ghibba, "none of these. He was betwixt and between. But
he wore a ragged red jacket, like those of the Mulgars, and on his
woman-hand stood no fourth finger."

"Was the little woman-finger newly gone, or oldly gone?" said Nod.

"I was younger then, Nizza-neela, and looked close at everything. It
was newly gone. The stump was bald and pale red. He was, too, white in
the extreme, this old Mulgar travelling out of Munza. Every single hair
he carried had, as it were, been dipped in Tishnar's meal."

"I believe--oh, but I do believe," said Nod, "this poor old traveller
was my father, the Mulla-mulgar Seelem, of the beautiful Valleys."

"Then," said Ghibba, jerking his faggot on to his back, and turning
towards the camp, "he was a happy Mulgar, for he has brave sons."

"Tell me more," said Nod. "What did he talk about? Did he speak ever of
Ummanodda? How long did he stay with the Mulla-moonas? Which way did he
go?"

"Lead on, then," said Ghibba, peering under his bandage.

"Here go I," said Nod, touching his paw.

"He followed the mountain-paths with my own father," said Ghibba, "and
lived alone for many days in one of our Spanyards,[7] for he was worn
out with travel, and nearly dead from lying down to drink out of a
Quickkul-fish pool. But after five days, while he was still weak, he
rose up at daybreak, crying out in Munza-mulgar he could remain with us
no longer. So my people brought him, as I have brought you, to this
everlasting snow-field, where he said farewell and journeyed on alone."

    [7] I suppose, huts or burrowings.

"Had he a gun?" said Nod.

"What is a gun, Nizza-neela?"

"What then--what then?" cried Nod impatiently.

"Two nights afterwards," continued the old Mulgar, "some of my people
came up to the other end of the gorge of the Long-noses. There they
found him, cold and bleeding, in his second sleep. The Long-noses had
pelted him with stones till they were tired. But it was not their stones
that had driven him back. He would not answer when the Men of the
Mountains came whispering, but sat quite still, staring under his black
arches, as if afraid. After two days more he rose up again, crying out
in another voice, like a Môh-mulgar. So we came again with him, two
'ropes' of us, along the walks the traveller knows. And towards evening,
with his bag of nuts and water-bottle, in his rags of Juzana, he left us
once more. Next morning my father and my people came one or two together
to where we sit, and--what did they see?"

"_What_ did they see?" Nod repeated, with frightened eyes.

"They did see only this," said Ghibba: "footsteps--one-two, one-two,
just as the Mulla-mulgar walks--all across the snow beyond the
thorn-trees. But they did see also other footsteps, slipping, sliding,
and here and there a mark as if the traveller had fallen in the snow,
and all these coming _back_ from the thorn-trees. And at the beginning
of the ice-path was a broken bundle of nuts strewn abroad, but uneaten,
and the shreds of a red jacket. Water-bottle there was none, and Mulgar
there was none. We never saw or heard of that Mulgar again."

"O Man of the Mountains," cried Nod, "where, then, is my father now?"

Ghibba stooped down and peered under his bandage close into Nod's small
face. "I believe, Eengenares, your father--if that Mulgar was your
father--is happy and safe now in the Valleys of Tishnar."

"But," said Nod, "he must have come back again out of his wits with fear
of the Country of Shadows."

"Why," said Ghibba, "a brave Mulgar might come back once, twice, ten
times; but while one foot would swing after the other, he might still
arise in the morning and try again. 'On, on,' he would say. 'It is
better to die, going, than to live, come-back.'"

And Nod comforted himself a little with that. Perhaps he would yet meet
his father again, riding on Tishnar's leopard-bridled Zevveras;
perhaps--and he twisted his little head over his shoulder--perhaps even
now his Meermut haunted near.

"But tell me--tell me _this_, Mountain-mulgar: What was the fear which
drove him back? What feet so light ran after him that they left no
imprint in the snow? Whose shadow-hands tore his jacket to pieces?"

Ghibba threw down his bundle of twigs, and rubbed his itching arms with
snow.

"That, Mulla-mulgar," he said, smiling crookedly, "we shall soon find
out for ourselves. If only I had the Wonderstone hung in my beard, I
should go singing."

Nod opened his mouth as if to speak, and shut it again. He stared hard
at those bandaged eyes. He glanced across at the black, huddling
thorn-trees; at the Mountain-mulgars, going and returning with their
faggots; at Thimble lying dozing in his litter. All the while betwixt
finger and thumb he squeezed and pinched his Wonderstone beneath the
lappet of his pocket.

Should he tell Ghibba? Should he wait? And while he was fretting in
doubt whether or no, there came a sharp, short yelp, and suddenly out of
the thorn-trees skipped a Mountain-mulgar, and came scampering
helter-skelter over the frozen snow, yelping and chattering as he ran.
Following close behind him lumbered Thumb, who hobbled a little way,
then stopped and turned back, staring.

"Why do you dance in the snow, my poor child? What ails you?" mocked
Ghibba, when the Mountain-mulgar had drawn near. "Have you pricked your
little toe?"

The Mountain-mulgar cowered panting by the fire which Ghibba had
kindled. And for a long while he made no answer. So Nod scrambled on his
fours up the crusted slope of snow. He passed, as he went, two or three
of the Men of the Mountains whimpering and whispering. But none of them
could tell him what they feared. At last he reached Thumb, who was still
standing, stooping in the snow, staring silently towards the clustering
thorn-trees.

"What is it, brother?" said Nod, as he came near. "What is it, brother?
Why do you crouch and stare?"

"Come close, Ummanodda," said Thumb. "Tell me, is there anything I see?"
They hobbled a little nearer, and stood stooping together with eyes
fixed.

    [Illustration: "WHAT IS IT, BROTHER? WHY DO YOU CROUCH AND STARE?"]

These thorn-trees, as dense as holly, but twisted and huddled, grew not
close together, but some few paces apart, as if they feared each other's
company. Between them only purest snow lay, on which evening shed its
light. And now that the sun was setting, leaning his beams on them from
behind Mōōt, their gnarled and spiny branches were all aflame with
scarlet. It was utterly still. Nod stood with wide-open eyes. And softly
and suddenly, he hardly knew how or when, he found himself gazing into a
face, quiet and lovely, and as it were of the beauty of the air. He
could not stir. He had no time to be afraid. They stood there, these
clumsy Mulgars, so still that they might have been carved out of wood.
Yet, thought Nod afterwards, he was not afraid. He was only startled at
seeing eyes so beautiful beneath hair faint as moonlight, between the
thorn-trees, smiling out at him from the coloured light of sunset. Then,
just as suddenly and as softly, the face was gone, vanished.

"Thumb, Thumb!" he whispered, "surely I have seen the eyes of a
wandering Midden of Tishnar?"

"Hst!" said Thumb harshly; "there, there!" He pointed towards one of the
thorn-trees. Every branch was quivering, every curved, speared leaf
trembling, as if a flock of silvery Parrakeetoes perched in the upper
branches, where there are no thorns, or as if scores of the tiny
Spider-mulgars swung from twig to twig. The next moment it was
still--still as all the others that stood around, afire with the last
sunbeams. Yet nothing had come, nothing gone.

"Acch magloona nani, Nod," called Thumb, afraid, "lagoosla sul majeela!"

They scuttled back, without once turning their heads, to the fire, where
all the Hill-mulgars were sitting. Whispering together they were, too,
as they nibbled their cheese and sipped slowly from their gurgling,
narrow-mouthed bags or bottles. They had carried Thimble close to the
fire, and Ghibba was roasting nuts for him. Thumb and Nod came down and
seated themselves beside Ghibba, but they had agreed together to say
nothing of what they had seen, for fear of affrighting Thimble, who was
still weak in head and body, and continually shivering. And Nod told his
brothers all that Ghibba had told him concerning the solitary traveller.
And Thumb sat listening, heavy and still, with his great face towards
the huddling thorns that wooded the height.

So they talked and talked, sitting together, round about their fire. The
twigs of these thorns burn marvellous clear with colours, and at each
thorn-tip, as the flame licks near, wells out and gathers a milk-pale
globe of poison that, drying, bursts in the heat. So all the fire is
continually a-crackle, amidst a thin smoke of a smell like nard. Never
before had so bright a bonfire blazed upon these hills. For the Men of
the Mountains never camp beyond the pass, and the Long-noses have not
even the wits to keep a fire fed with fuel. But as the day wore on, and
when all the feather-smoke had dispersed, they assembled in hundreds
upon hundreds, sitting a long distance off, all their noses stuck out
towards the blaze, snuffing the cloudy fragrance of the nard. But they
were too much afraid of the travellers to venture near now that they
were free men and out of the pass.

The sun had set, but the moon was at full, and the travellers determined
to go forward at once. It was agreed that every one should carry a
bundle of sticks on his shoulders, also a stout cudgel or staff; that
they should march close in rows of four, with Thimble's litter in their
midst; and that the Mulgar at each corner should carry a burning torch.
They made what haste they could to tie up their bundles, bottles, and
faggots, so as to lose nothing of the moon's brilliance during the long
night. She rode unclouded above the snow-fields when the little band of
Mulgar-travellers set out. As soon as they were gone, down trooped the
long-nosed Obobbomans to the fire, sniffing and scuffling, to fall
asleep at last, higgledy-piggledy, in a great squirrel-coloured ring
around the glowing embers, their noses towards the fire.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIX


The travellers marched slowly, keeping sharp watch, their cudgels ready
in their hands. Behind them, paled by the moonlight, shook the fiery
silver of the Salemnāgar. With this at their backs and that North
Pole, Mōōt, in huge congealment, a little to their left, they made
their way at an angle across the open snow, and approached the tangled
thickets. Here they walked more closely together, with heads aslant and
tails in air, like little old men, like pedlars, blinking and spying,
wishing beyond measure they were sitting in comfort around their
watch-fire. The farther they zigzagged betwixt the thorns, the more
doubtful grew the way. For the thorn-trees rise all so equal in height
and thickness they often with their tops shut out the stars, and there
was nothing by which the travellers could mark what way they went.

Still they pressed on, their hairy faces to the night-wind, which Ghibba
had observed before starting was drifting from the north. They shuffled
crisply over the snow, coughing softly, and gurring in their throats,
winding in and out between the trees, and casting lean, gigantic shadows
across the open spaces. For so dazzling bright the moon gleamed, she
almost put out the smoky flare of their torches. But it gave the Mulgars
more courage to march encompassed with their own light. Their packs were
heavy, the thickets sloped continually upward. But the poison-thorns
curl backward beneath the drooping hood of their leaves by night--in the
hours, that is, when, it is said, they distil their poison--so the
travellers were no longer fretted by their stings. Thus, then, they
gradually advanced till Mōōt was left behind them, and out of the
grey night rose Mulgarmeerez, mightiest of Arakkaboa's peaks, whose
snows have known no Mulgar footprints since the world began.

Only the whish of the travellers' feet on the snow was to be heard, when
suddenly all with one accord stopped dead, as if a voice had cried,
"Halt!"

Their torches faintly crackled, their smoke rising in four straight
pillars towards the stars. And they heard, as if everywhere around them
in the air, clear yet marvellously small voices singing with a thin and
pining sound like glass. It floated near, this tiny, multitudinous
music--so near that the travellers drew back their face with wide-open
eyes. Then it seemed out of the infinite distance to come, echoing
across the moonlit spars that towered above their heads.

And Ghibba said softly, jerking up his bundle and peering around him
from beneath his eye-bandage: "Courage, my kinsmen! it is the
danger-song of Tishnar we hear, who loves the fearless."

At this one of the Men of the Mountains thrust up his pointed chin, and
said, wagging his head: "Why do we march like this at night,
Mulla-moona? These are not our mountain-passes. Let us camp here while
we are still alive, and burn a great watch-fire till morning."

"You have faggots, Cousin of a Skeeto," said Ghibba. "Kindle a fire for
yourself, and catch us up at daybreak."

The Mountain-men laughed wheezily, for now the singing had died away. On
they pushed again. But now the thorn-trees gathered yet closer together,
so that the Mulgars could no longer walk in company, but had to straggle
up by ones or twos as best they could. Still up and up they clambered,
laying hold of the thick tufts of leaves sticky with poison to drag
themselves forward. Many times they had to pause to recover their
breath, and Nod turned giddy to look down on the moon-dappled forest
through which they had so heavily ascended. Thus they continued, until,
quite without warning, Thumb, who was leading, broke out into one loud,
hard, short bark of fear, for he suddenly found himself standing beneath
contorted branches on the verge of another and wider plateau of snow. He
stood motionless, leaning heavily on his cudgel, the knuckles of his
other hand resting in the snow, his breath caught back, and his head
stooping forward between his shoulders, staring on and on between
astonishment and fear.

    [Illustration: FOR THERE ... STOOD AS IF FROZEN IN THE MOONLIGHT
    THE MONSTROUS SILVER-HAIRED MEERMUTS OF MULGARMEEREZ, GUARDING
    THE ENCHANTED ORCHARDS OF TISHNAR.]

For there, all along the opposite ridge, as it were on the margin of an
enormous platter, stood as if frozen in the moonlight the monstrous
silver-haired Meermuts of Mulgarmeerez, guarding the enchanted orchards
of Tishnar. Thumb stood in deep shadow, for instantly, at sight of these
shapes, as one by one the travellers came straggling up together, they
quenched their hissing torches in the snow. No sign made the Meermuts
that they had seen the little quaking band of lean and ragged Mulgars.
But even a squirrel cracking a nut could have been heard across these
windless and icy altitudes. And even now it seemed that bark of fear
went echoing from spur to spur. The wretched Mulgars could only stand
and gaze in helpless confusion at the phantoms, whose eyes shone
dismally in the moon beneath their silver hair and great purple caps.
The Meermuts stood, as it were, for a living rampart all down the
untrodden snow towards the great Pit of Mulgarmeerez till lost in the
faint grey mists of the mountains.

"What's to be done now, Prince of Ladder-makers?" said Thumb presently.
"Are we not weary of wandering? There's room for us all in those great
shadowy bellies."

"Itthiluthi thoth 'Meermut' onnoth anoot oonoothi," lisped one of the
Moona-mulgars--that is to say, in their own language, "But maybe these
Meermuts gnaw before swallowing."

As for Ghibba, he feigned that his eyes were too weak and sore, and
peered in vain beneath his bandages. "Tell me what's to be seen,
Mulla-mulgar," he said. "Why do we linger? The frost's in my toes. Up
with fresh torches and go forward."

Thumb grunted, but made no answer. Then Ghibba drew softly back into the
deeper shadow, and the rest of the Mulgars, who by now were all come
up, stood whispering, some in perplexity, not knowing what to do; some
itching and sniffing to go forward, and one or two for turning back. One
Moona-mulgar, indeed, mewing like a cat in his extreme fear, when he had
heard Thumb's sudden bark, had turned lean shanks and hairy arms and
fled down by the way they had come. Fainter and fainter had grown the
sounds of snapping twigs, until all again was silent.

"What wonder our father Seelem stumbled as he ran?" muttered Nod to
Thumb.

But Ghibba stood thinking, the skin of his forehead twitching up and
down, as is the habit of nearly all Mulgars, high and low. "This is our
riddle, O Mulla-mulgars," he said: "If we turn back and climb slowly
upward, so as to creep round in hiding from these giant Meermuts, we
shall only come at last to batter our heads against the walls of
Mōōt. And Mōōt I know of old: there the Gunga-moonas make
their huddles. And the other way, under the moon, there juts a precipice
five thousand Mulgars deep, through which, so the old news goes, creeps
slowlier than moss Tishnar's never-melting Obea of ice. Here, then, is
our answer, Princes: The valleys must be yet many long days' journey.
Either, then, we go straight forward beneath the feet of Tishnar's
Orchard-meermuts, like forest-mice that gambol among a Mutti of
Ephelantoes, or else, like shivering Jack-Alls, we go back, to live out
the rest of this littlest of lives itching, but having nowhere to
scratch. What thinks the Mulgar Eengenares?"

And at that Nod remembered what the watchman had said, when they were
talking together by the eagles' watch-fires. He touched Thumb, speaking
softly in Mulgar-royal. "Thumb, my brother, what of the Wonderstone?
what of the Wonderstone? Shall we tell this Moona-mulgar of that?"

Thumb laughed sulkily. "Seelem kept all his wits for you, Jugguba," he
answered; "rub and see!"

So Nod spread open his pocket-flap and fetched out the Wonderstone,
wrapped in its wisp of wool and the stained leaf of paper from Battle's
little book. He held it out in his brown, hairless palm to Ghibba
beneath the thorn. "What think you of that, Mulla-moona?" he said. And
even Ghibba's dim eyes could discern its milk-pale shining. They talked
long together in the shadow of the thorns, while the rest of the skinny
travellers sat silent beside their bundles, coughing and blinking as
they mumbled their mouldy cheese-rind.

Ghibba said that, as Nod was a Nizza-neela, they should venture out
alone together. "I am nothing but a skin of bones--nothing to pick," he
said, "and all but sand-blind, and therefore could not see to be
afraid."

"No, no, no, Mulla-moona," Thumb grunted stubbornly. "If mischief came
to my brother, how could I live on, listening to the chittering of his
mother's Meermut asking me, 'Where is Nod?' Stay here and guard my
brother, Thimbulla, who is too sick and weak to go with us; and if we
neither of us return before morning, deal kindly with him, Mulla-moona,
and have our thanks till you too are come to be a shadow."

So at last it was agreed between them. And Thumb and Nod returned
together to the edge of the wood and peered out once more towards the
phantom-guarded orchards. Nod waited no longer. He wetted his thumb once
more, and rubbed thrice, droning or crooning, and stamping nimbly in the
snow, till suddenly Thumb sprang back clean into the midst of a
thorn-tree in his dismay.

"Ubbe nimba sul ugglourint!" he cried hollowly. For the child stood
there in the snow, shining as if his fur were on fire with silver light.
About his head a wreath of moon-coloured buds like frost-flowers was
set. His shoulders were hung with a robe like spider-silk falling behind
him to his glistening heels. But it was Nod's shrill small laughter that
came out of the shining.

"Follow, oh follow, brother," he said. "I am Fulby, I am Oomgar's
M'keeso; it is a dream; it is a night-shadow; it is Nod Meermut; it is
fires of Tishnar. Hide in my blaze, Thumb Mulgar. And see these Noomas
cringe!"

Thumb grunted, beat once on his chest like a Gunga, and they stepped
boldly out together, first Nod, then black Thumb, into the wide
splendour of the waste. And the Men of the Mountains watched them from
between the spiky branches, with eyes round as the Minimuls', and mouths
ajar, showing in their hair their catlike teeth.

Out into the open snow that borders for leagues the trees of Tishnar's
orchard stepped Nod, with his Wonderstone. And, as he moved along, the
frost-parched flakes burned with the rainbow. But if the phantoms of
Mulgarmeerez were not blind, they were surely dumb. They made no sign
that they perceived this blazing pigmy advancing against them. Nod's
light heels fell so fast Thumb could scarcely keep pace with him. He
came on grunting and coughing, plying his thick cudgel, his great dark
eyes fixed stubbornly upon the snow. And lo and behold! when next Nod
lifted his face he saw only moonlight shining upon the smooth trunks of
trees, which in the higher branches were stooping with coloured fruit.
He laughed aloud. "See, Thumb," he said, "my magic burns. M'keeso
chatters. These Tishnar Meermuts are nought but trunks of trees!"

But Thumb stared in more dismal terror still, for he saw plainly now
their huge and shadowy clubs, their necklets of gold and ivory, and the
hideous, purple-capped faces of the ghouls gloating down on him. "Press
on, Ummanodda; your eyes burn magic, and trees to you are sudden death
to me." His hair stood out in a grisly mantle around him, for sheer fear
and horror of these gigantic faces as they passed. But Nod edged lightly
through, like mantling swan or peacock, seeing only Tishnar's lovely
orchards. No snow lay here in these enchanted glades, but the grass was
powdered with pure white flowers that caught the flame of him in their
beauty as he passed. The strange small voices the travellers had heard
on the hillside seemed haunting the laden boughs of the orchard. But to
Thumb all was darkness, and frozen snow, spiked thorn-trees, a-roost
with evil birds, and the horror of the motionless phantoms behind him.
He seemed ever and again to hear their stride between the twigs, and to
feel a terrific thumb and finger closing over his matted scalp.

In a little while the path the two Mulgars thridded led out from under
the boughs, and they found themselves at the foot of the great peak they
had all night been approaching. And Nod saw fountains springing in foam
amid the flowery grasses, and all about them were trees laden with
fruit, and the music of instruments and distant voices. But not on these
near things was his mind set, but on the secret paths of Mulgarmeerez,
winding down from the crested peak above.

"O brother, my brother! Tishnar is walking on the hills," he said. But
Thumb, though he rubbed his eyes, could see nothing but the towering and
desolate scaurs of ice and snow and a kind of snow-choked ridge girdling
the abrupt mountain-side. But Nod came to a stand, half crouching,
amazed, and watched, as it seemed to him, the Middens of Tishnar riding
more beautiful than daybreak in the moonlight of her hills. And he heard
a clear voice within him cry: "Have no fear, Nizza-neela, Mulla-mulgar
jugguba Ummanodda, neddipogo, Eengenares; feast and be merry. Tishnar
watches over the brave." And he told Thumb what the voice had said to
him.

And Thumb grew angry, for he was tired out of his courage. "Have it as
you will," he said. "It is easy to fear nothing and to see what is not
here when you meddle with magic, and shine like a fish out of water. But
as for me, I go back to my brother Thimble, and to my friends, the Men
of the Mountains." And he stumped sullenly off, crouching low over his
cudgel.

Then Nod said softly: "Wonderstone, Wonderstone! call back my brother
and open his eyes." Instantly Thumb stopped and stood upright. Thorn and
snow, blain and ache and bruise, were gone. He saw the meadows alight
with starry flowers, the fountains and the fruit. And he smelled the
smoke of nard and soltziphal burning in the cressets of the servants of
Tishnar. Nod laughed silently, and said: "Bring, too, O Wonderstone, my
brother Thimbulla on his litter, and the Prince Ghibba and his kinsfolk
to feast with me."

For there, in the midst between the fountains, was a long low table
spread with flowers and strange fruits and nuts, and lit with clear,
pear-shaped flames floating in the air like that of the Wonderstone, but
of the colours of ivory and emerald and amethyst; with nineteen platters
of silver and nineteen goblets of gold. And presently they heard in the
distance the grasshopper voices of the Hill-mulgars, as they came
stubbling along with Thimble's litter in their midst, carrying their
heavy faggots and bottles and bundles, their pink eyes blinking, their
knees trembling, not knowing whether to be joyful or afraid.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XX


They cast off their burdens into the flowery meadows and besprinkled
themselves with the pools of crystal water beneath the fountains. And
Nod himself bathed Ghibba's eyes in the fountain-pool, so that he, too,
could see, looking close, the wandering flames lighting the platters and
goblets and fruits and nuts and flowers.

    [Illustration: THEY FEASTED ON FRUITS THEY NEVER BEFORE HAD TASTED
    NOR KNEW TO GROW ON EARTH]

The travellers sat down, all the nineteen of them, Nod at the head of
the table--that is, looking towards Mulgarmeerez--and Thumb at the foot,
with Thimble propped up on the one side and Ghibba on the other. Many of
the Mountain-mulgars, however, who eat always sitting on the ground,
soon found this perching on stools at a table irksome for their
pleasure, and squatted themselves down in the thick grasses for
Tishnar's supper. And they feasted on fruits they never before had
tasted nor knew to grow on earth: one, rosy and red and round and small,
with a long, slender stalk and a little pale hard stone, of the colour
of amber, in the middle; one very sweet and globular, jacketed in a
yellow rind, the inside all divided into little juicy wedges as if for a
mouthful each; another rough like lichen, with a tuft of leaves in a
spike, rusty without and pale within; yet another with a hard, smooth
coat like faded copper, but inside a houseful of hundreds of tiny fruits
like seeds of the colour of blood, and running over with pleasant
juices; also Manakin-figs, keeries, and love-apples, quinces, juleeps,
xandimons, and grapes.

There were nuts also--green, coral, and cinnamon, long and little,
hairy, smooth, crinkled, rough, in pairs, dark and double, round-ribbed
and nuggeted--every kind of nut the pouch of Mulgar knows. And they
drank from their goblets thin sweet wine, honey-coloured, and lilac. And
while they ate and drank and made merry, lifting their cups, cracking
their nuts, hungrily supping, a distant and beautiful music clashed in
the air around the feasting travellers, like the music of cymbal and
dulcimer. Nod sat silken-silvery, with every hair enlustred, his
wrinkles gone, his small right hand feeding him, while with his
woman-hand he clasped his Wonderstone, his little face bright as a
child's, with topaz eyes. Rejoiced were the sad-faced Mountain-mulgars
that they had not forsaken the wandering Princes and gone home. They
feasted like men.

And at last, when all were refreshed, they rose and raised their voices
to Tishnar, hoarse, and shrill, turning their faces towards the vast and
silent peak of Mulgarmeerez, that jutted to the stars above their heads.
Then they laid themselves down in the sweet Immanoosa-scented meadow,
and soon, lulled by the noise of the fountains and the faint, wandering
orchard music, they fell asleep. Nod, too, lay down, ruffled with fire,
burning like touchwood, amid the enchanted flowers. But as deeper and
deeper he sank to sleep, his small brown fingers loosened and unclasped
about his Wonderstone; it fell to the bottom of his sheep-skin pocket,
and then, like a dream, vanished, gone, were fountain, feast, and music.
And deep in snow, encircled by poison-thorns, slumbered the nineteen
travellers in their rags and solitude, come out of magic, though they
knew it not.

One by one they awoke, stiff and dazed from so deep a sleep. They made
no stay here, lest Tishnar should be angered with them. And to some the
night seemed a dream; some even whispered, "Nōōmanossi." And all,
turning their faces, with daybreak broadening on their cheeks, hastily
took up their workaday bundles again and hurried off.

But when Nod lifted his eyes to Mulgarmeerez, it seemed as if many
phantom faces were looking down on them as they hastened, like some
small company of hares or coneys, straggling across the whiteness. Being
refreshed with sleep and Tishnar's phantom supper, the Mountain-mulgars
did not stay to take their "glare," but just screened their feeble eyes
against the sunbeams with eagle feathers, and, with Thimble swinging in
his litter, scurried on across these smoother slopes. By night
Mulgarmeerez, last of the seven peaks of Arakkaboa, was left behind
them, and it seemed the wind blew not so sharply out of the haze on this
side of the haunted woods. The travellers towards evening slept in a dry
cavern. But it was a fidgety sleep, for this cave was the haunt of an
odd and wily sand-flea that made the most of a Mulgar-supper, more
toothsome than anything it had feasted on for many a day.

Near about the middle of the next morning the travellers came in their
descent to a stream of water rushing swiftly but smoothly in the channel
it had graven for its waters out of the rock. This torrent was green,
icy, and deep. On its farther side the rock rose steep and smooth. The
travellers kindled themselves a fire and warmed their cold bones. Then,
having emptied their skin-bottles, they set off along the bank, or as
near to it as they could walk at ease. Thimble's shivering was now gone,
and he marched along with his brothers, rather hobbledy, but in very
good spirits. He took good care, however, to keep well in front of the
Mountain-mulgars, for if he so much as faintly sniffed their cheese, he
fell sick. Ever downward now they were marching. A warm wind was blowing
out of the valley, the snows were melting, and rills trickling
everywhere into the green and swirling water. And after a march all
morning, they came to a village of the Fishing-mulgars.

These are a peaceable and ugly tribe of Mulgars, with extremely long and
sinewy tails, which are tufted at the tip, like those of the
Moona-mulgars, with a bunch of fine silky hair. They smear upon this
tuft the pulp of a fruit that grows on a bush hanging over the water,
called Soota, which the fish that swim in this torrent never weary of
nibbling. Then, sitting huddled up and motionless in some little inlet
or rocky hole in the bank, the Fishing-mulgar pays out his long tail and
lets it drift with the stream. By-and-by, maybe, some hungry fish comes
swimming by that way and smells the pounded Soota. He softly stays,
nibbling and tasting. Very slowly the Fishing-mulgar, who instantly
perceives the least commotion in his tail-tuft, draws back his bait
without so much as blinking an eyelid. And when he has enticed the fish
quite close to the bank, still all intent on its feeding, he stoops in a
flash, and, plunging his sharp-nailed hands in the water, hooks the
struggler out.

They swarm about water, these Mulgars, and teach their tiny babies to
fish, too, by scooping out a hole or basin in the rock, which they fill
from the torrent. In this they set free two or three little half-grown
fish. These, with their infant tails, the children catch again and
again, and are rewarded at evening, according to their skill, with a
slice of roe or a backbone to pick. An old and crafty Fishing-mulgar
will sit happy all day in some smooth hollow, and, having snared perhaps
four or five, or even, maybe, as many as nine or twelve fat fishes, home
he goes to his leaf-thatched huddle or sand-hole, and eats and eats till
he can eat no more. After which his wife and children squat round and
feed on what remains. Some eat raw, and those of less gluttony cook
their catch at a large fire, which they keep burning night and day. Here
the whole village of them may be seen sitting of an evening toasting
their silvery supper. But, although they are such greedy feeders, there
is something in the fish that keeps these Mulgars very lean. And the
more they eat the leaner they get.

Sometimes, Ghibba told Nod, Fishing-mulgars, who have given up all
fruits and nuts to gluttonize, and live only on fish, have been known by
much feeding to waste quite away. Moreover, a few years of this cold
fishing paralyses their tails. And so many go misshapen. On being
questioned as to where they had learned to make fire, the
Fishing-mulgars told Ghibba that a certain squinting Môh-mulgar had come
their way once along the torrent, tongue-tied and trembling with palsy.
By the fire he had made for himself the Fishing-mulgars, after he was
gone, had stacked wood, and this was the selfsame fire that had been
kept burning ever since. Did once this fire die out, not knowing of, nor
having any, first-sticks, it would be raw fish for the tribe for
evermore. On hearing this, the travellers looked long at one another
between gladness and dismay--gladness to hear that their father Seelem
(if it was he) had come alive out of the Orchards, and dismay for his
many ills.

They made their camp for two nights with these friendly people. They are
as dull and stupid in most things as they are artful at fishing. But
they are, beyond even the Munza-mulgars, mischievous mimics. Even the
little ones would come mincing and peeping with wisps of moss and grass
stuck on their faces for eyebrows and whiskers, their long tails cocked
over their shoulders, their eyes screwed up, in imitation of the Men of
the Mountains. Lank old Thimble laughed himself hoarse at these
children. At night they beat little wood drums of different notes round
their fires, making a sort of wearisome harmony. They also play at many
sports--"Fish in the Ring," "A tail, a tail, a tail!" and "Here sups
Sullilulli." But I will not describe them, for they are just such games
as are played all the world over by Oomgar and Mulgar alike. They are
all, however, young and old, hale and paralysed, incorrigible thieves
and gluttons, and rarely comb themselves.

All along the rocky banks of the torrent the travellers passed next day
the snug green houses of these Fishing-mulgars. Nod often stayed awhile
to watch their fishing, and almost wished he had a tail, so that he,
too, might smear and dangle and watch and plunge. But their language Nod
could not in the least understand. Only by the help of signs and
grimaces and long palaver could even Ghibba himself understand them. But
he learned at least that, for some reason, the travellers would not long
be able to follow the river, for the Fishing-mulgar would first point to
the travellers, then to the water, and draw a great arch with their
finger in the air, shaking their little heads with shut eyes.

Ghibba tried in vain to catch exactly what they meant by these signs,
for they had no word to describe their meaning to him. But after he had
patiently watched and listened, he said: "I think, Mulla-mulgars, they
mean that if we keep walking along these slippery high banks, one by
one, we shall topple head over heels into the torrent, and be
drowned--over like that," he said, and traced with his finger an arch in
the air.

But this was by no means what the Fishing-mulgars meant. For, about
three leagues beyond the last of their houses, the travellers began to
hear a distant and steady roar, like a faint, continuous thunder, which
grew as they advanced ever louder and louder. And when the first faint
flowers began to peep blue and yellow along the margin where the sun had
melted the snow, they came to where the waters of the torrent widened
and forked, some, with a great boiling of foam and prodigious clamour,
whelming sheer down a precipice of rock, while the rest swept green and
full and smooth into a rounded cavern in the mountain-side.

Here, as it was now drawing towards darkness, the travellers built their
fire and made their camp. Next morning Ghibba decided, after long
palaver, to take with him two or three of the Mountain-mulgars to see if
they could clamber down beside the cataract, to discover what kind of
country lay beneath. Standing above, and peering down, they could see
nothing, because, with the melting of the snow, a thick mist had risen
out of the valley, and swam white as milk beneath them, into which great
dish of milk the cataract poured its foam. Ghibba took at last with him
five of the nimblest and youngest of the Moona-mulgars, not knowing what
difficulties or dangers might not beset them. But he promised to return
to the Mulla-mulgars before nightfall.

"But if," he said, "the first star comes, but no Ghibba, then do you, O
Royalties, if it please you, build up a big fire above the waters, so
that we may grope our way back to you before morning."

So, with bundles of nuts and a little of the mountain cheese that was
left, when the morning was high, Ghibba and his five set off. The rest
of the travellers sat basking in the sunshine all that day, dressing
their sores and bruises, dusting themselves, and sleeking out their
matted hair. Some even, so great was the neglect they had fallen into,
took water to themselves to ease their labour. But for the most part
Mulgars use water for their insides only (and that not often, so juicy
are their fruits), never for their out. But dusk began to fall, the
stars to shine faintly, darkness to sally out of the forest upon the
mountain-side, and Ghibba had not returned. The travellers heaped on
more wood, of which there was abundance, and lit a fire so fiery bright
that to the Rock-folk looking down--wolf, and fox, and eagle, and
mountain-leopard--it seemed like a great "palaver" of Oomgar-nuggas, who
had had their villages in this valley many years before the
Witzaweelwūlla.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXI


When they could no longer see the hilltop for cloud and mist, Thumb lit
a second fire on the isle of rock upon the verge of the cataract, where
the water could not scatter on it. But no sign came of Ghibba and his
five Moona-men, and Nod began to fret, and could eat no supper, for fear
that some evil had overtaken them. But he said nothing, because he knew
well enough by now that Thumb had much the same stomach for distrust as
himself, though he kept a still tongue in his head, and that it only
angered him to be pestered with questions no Mulgar-wit could answer. He
sat by the watch-fire in his draggled sheep's-jacket, his hands on his
knees, and wished he had lent Ghibba his Wonderstone. "But no," he
thought, "Mutta-matutta bade me 'to no one.' Ghibba is cunning and
brave; he will come back."

The Men of the Mountains coiled themselves up by the fire. They fear
neither for themselves nor for one another. "We die because we must,"
they say. Yet none the less they raise, as I have said, long ululatory
lamentations over their dead, and Nōōmanossi is their enemy as
much as any Mulgar's. Thimble, still a little weak and hazy in his head
after his sickness, fell quickly asleep; and soon even Thumb, with head
wagging from side to side, though he sat bolt upright on his heels in
front of the fire, was dozing.

Nod alone could not close his eyes. He watched his brother's great face;
lower, lower would drop his chin, wheel round, and start up again with a
jerk. "Good dreams, old Thumb," he whispered; "dreams of Salem that
bring him near!"

And all the while that these thoughts were stirring in his head he heard
the endless echoing and answering voices of the cataract. Now they
seemed the voices of Mulgars quarrelling, shouting, and fighting near
and far; and now it seemed as if a thousand thousand birds were singing
sweet and shrill beneath the leaves of a great forest. The shadows of
the fire danced high. But the night was clear. He could see a great blue
star shining right over their thin column of smoke, winding into the
air. And now from the ravine into which Ghibba had gone down with his
five Moona-men the milk-pale mists began softly to overflow, as if from
a pot filled to the brim. If only Ghibba would come back!

Nod scrambled up, and rather warily shuffled past the sleepers over to
the other beacon-fire they had kindled. A few strange little
night-beasts scuttled away as he drew near, attracted by the warmth of
the fire, or even, perhaps, taking refuge in its shine from the
night-hunting birds that wheeled and whirred in the air above them.
"Urrckk, urck!" croaked one, swinging so close that Nod felt the fan of
its wings on his cheek. "Starving Mulgars, urrckk, urck!" it croaked.

He heaped up the fire. But he could not see a hand's breadth into the
ravine. Calm and still the mist lay, and softer than wool. Nod wandered
restlessly back, passed again the camping Mulgars, and hobbled across
till he came to the rocky bank of the torrent near to where it forked.
Here a faint reflection of the flamelight fell, and Nod could see the
drowsy fish floating coloured and round-eyed in the sliding water. And
while he was standing there, he thought, like the sound of an ooboë
singing amid thunder, he seemed to hear on the verge of the roar of the
cataract a small wailing voice, not of birds, nor of Mulgars, nor like
the phantom music of Tishnar. He crept softly down and along the
water-side, under a black and enormous dragon-tree. And beneath the
giant sedge he leaned forward his little hairy head, and as his
flame-haunted eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he perceived in the
dark-green dusk in which she sat a Water-midden sitting low among the
rushes, singing, as if she herself were only music, an odd little
water-clear song.

    "Bubble, Bubble,
       Swim to see
     Oh, how beautiful
       I be.

    "Fishes, Fishes,
       Finned and fine,
     What's your gold
       Compared with mine?

    "Why, then, has
       Wise Tishnar made
     One so lovely,
       Yet so sad?

    "Lone am I,
       And can but make
     A little song,
       For singing's sake."

Her slim hands, her stooping shoulders, were clear and pale as ivory,
and Nod could see in the rosy glimmering of the flames her narrow,
beautiful face reflected amid the gold of her hair upon the formless
waters. Mutta-matutta once had told Nod a story about the Water-middens
whom Tishnar had made beyond all things beautiful, and yet whose beauty
had made beyond all things sad. But he could never in the least
understand why this was so. When, by the sorcery of his Wonderstone, he
had swept all glittering the night before across the jewelled snow, he
had never before felt so happy. Why, then, was this Water-midden--by how
much more beautiful than he was then!--why was she not happy, too? He
peered in his curiosity, with head on one side and blinking eyes, at the
Water-midden, and presently, without knowing it, breathed out a long,
gruff sigh.

The still Water-midden instantly stayed her singing and looked up at
him. Not in the least less fair than the clustering flowers of Tishnar's
orchard was her pale startled face. Her eyes were dark as starry night's
beneath her narrow brows. She drew her fingers very stealthily across
the clear dark water.

"Are you, then, one of those wild wandering Mulgars that light great
fires by night," she said, "and scare all my fishes from sleeping?"

"Yes, Midden; I and my brothers," said Nod. "We light fires because we
are cold and hungry. We are wanderers; that is true. But 'wild'--I know
not."

"'Cold,' O Mulgar, and with a jacket of sheep's wool, thick and curled,
like that?"

Nod laughed. "It was a pleasant coat when it was new, Midden, but we are
old friends now--it and me. And though it keeps me warm enough marching
by day, when night comes, and this never-to-be-forgotten frost sharpens,
my bones begin to ache, as did my mother's before me, whose grave not
even Kush can see."

"The Mulgar should live, like me, in the water, then he, too, would
never know of cold. Whither do you and your brothers wander, O Mulgar?"

"We have come," said Nod, "from beyond all Munza-mulgar, that lies on
the other side of the river of the saffron-fearing Coccadrilloes--that
is, many score leagues southward of Arakkaboa--and we go to our Uncle,
King Assasimmon, Prince of the Valleys of Tishnar--that is, if that
Mountain-prince, my friend Ghibba, can find us a way."

The Water-midden looked at Nod, and drew softly, slowly back her smooth
gold locks from the slippery water. "The Mulla-mulgar, then, has seen
great dangers?" she said. "He is very young and little to have travelled
so far."

Nod's voice grew the least bit glorious. "'Little and young,'" he said.
"Oh yes. And yet, O beautiful Water-midden, my brothers would never
have been here without me."

"Tell me why that is," she said, leaning out of her heavy hair.

"Because--because," Nod answered slowly, and not daring to look into her
face--"because Queen Tishnar watches over me."

The Water-midden leaned her head. "But Tishnar watches over all," she
said.

"Why, then, O Midden, has, as your song said, Tishnar made you so sad?"

"Songs are but songs, Mulla-mulgar," she answered. "It is sad seeing
only my own small loneliness in the water. Would not the Mulgar himself
weary with only staring fish for company?"

"Are there, then, no other Water-middens in the river?" said Nod.

"Have you, then, seen any beside me?"

"None," said Nod.

The Water-midden turned away and stooped over the water. "Tell me," she
said, "why does the Queen Tishnar guard so closely _you_?"

"I am a Nizza-neela, Midden--Mulla-mulgar Ummanodda Nizza-neela
Eengenares--that is what I am called, speaking altogether. Other names,
too, I have, of course, mocking me. Who is there wise that was not once
foolish?"

"A Nizza-neela!" said the Midden, leaning back and glancing slyly out of
her dark eyes.

"Oh yes," said Nod gravely; "but besides that I carry with me...."

"Carry with you?" said she.

"Oh, only the Wonderstone," said Nod.

Then the Water-midden lifted both her hands, and scattered back her long
pale locks over her narrow shoulders. "The Wonderstone? What, then, is
that?"

Nod told her, though he felt angry with himself, all about the
Wonderstone, and what magic it had wrought.

"O most marvellous Mulla-mulgar," she said, "I think, if I could see but
once this Wonderstone--I think I should be never sad again."

Nod turned away, glancing over his shoulder to where, leaning amid the
stars, hung the distant darkness of Mulgarmeerez. He slowly unfastened
his ivory-buttoned pocket and groped for the Wonderstone. Holding it
tight in his bare brown palm, he scrambled down a little nearer to the
water, and unlatched his fingers to show it to the Midden. But now, to
his astonishment, instead of glooming pale as a little moon, it burned
angry as Antares.

The Water-midden peeped out between her hair, and laughed and clapped
her hands. "Oh, but if I might but hold it in my hand one moment, I
think that I should never even sigh again!" said she. Nod's fingers
closed on the Wonderstone again.

"I may not," he said.

"Then," said the Water-midden sorrowfully, "I will not ask."

"My mother told me," said Nod.

But the Water-midden seemed not now to be listening. She began to smooth
and sleek her hair, sprinkling the ice-cold water upon it, so that the
drops ran glittering down those slippery paths like dew.

"Midden, Midden," said Nod quickly, "I did not mean to say any
unkindness. You would give me back my Wonderstone very quickly?"

"Oh, but, gentle Mulla-mulgar," said the Midden, "my hands are cold;
they might put out its fiery flame."

"I do not think so, most beautiful Midden," Nod said. "Show me your
fingers, and let me see."

Both sly tiny hands, colder than ice-water, the beautiful Water-midden
outstretched towards him. He gazed, stooping out of his ugliness, into
those eyes whose darkness was only shadowy green, clearer than the
mountain-water. For an instant he waited, then he shut his eyes and put
the burning Wonderstone into those two small icy hands. "Return it to me
quickly--quickly, Midden, or Tishnar will be angered against me. How
must the Meermut of my mother now be mourning!"

But the Midden had drawn back amid the reeds, holding tight the ruby-red
stone in her small hands, and her eyes looked all darkened and slant,
and her small scarlet mouth was curled. "Can you not trust me but a
moment, Prince of the Mulgars?"

And suddenly a loud, hoarse voice broke out: "Nod ho, Nod ho! Ulla ulla!
Nod ho!" Nod started back.

"Oh, Midden, Midden!" he said, "it is my brother, Mulla Thumma, calling
me. Give me my Wonderstone; I must go at once."

But the Midden was now rocking and floating on the shadowy water, her
bright hair sleeking the stream behind her. Her face was all small
mischief. "Let me make magic but once," said she, "and I will return it.
Stop, Prince Ummanodda Nizzanares Eengeneela!"

"I cannot wait, not wait. Have pity on me, most beautiful Midden. I did
but put it into your hands for friendship's sake. Return it to me now.
Tishnar listens."

"Ummanodda! Ahôh, ahôh, ahôh!" bawled Thumb's harsh voice, coming
nearer.

"Oh, harsh and angry voice," cried the Midden, "it frightens me--it
frightens me. To-morrow, in the night-time, Mulla-mulgar, come again. I
will guard and keep your Wonderstone. Call me, call me. I will come."

There was a sudden pale and golden swirl of water. A light as of amber
floated an instant on the dark, gliding clearness of the torrent. Nod
stood up dazed and trembling. The Water-midden was gone. His eyes
glanced to and fro. Desolate and strange rose Tishnar's peak. He felt
small and afraid in the silence of the mountains. And again broke out,
hollow and mournful, Thumb's voice calling him. Nod hobbled and hid
himself behind a tree. Then from tree to tree he scurried in, hiding
under great ropes of Cullum and Samarak, until at last, as if he had
been wandering in the forest, he came out from behind Thumb.

"What is it, my brother?" he asked softly. "Why do you call me? Here is
Nod."

Thumb's eyes gladdened, but his face looked black and louring. "Why do
you play such Munza tricks," he said--"hiding from us in the night? How
am I to know what small pieces you may not have been dashed into on this
slippery Arakkaboa? What beasts may not have chosen Mulla-skeeto for
supper? Come back, foolish baby, and have no more of this creeping and
hiding!"

Nod burned with shame and rage at his jeers, but he felt too miserable
to answer him. He followed slowly after his brother, his small, lean,
hungry hand thrust deep into his empty pocket. "O Midden, Midden!" he
kept saying to himself; "why were you false to me? What evil did I do to
you that you should have stolen my Wonderstone?"

A thick grey curtain hung over the night, though daybreak must be near.
A few heavy hailstones scattered down through the still branches. And
athwart Mōōt and Mulgarmeerez a distant thunder rolled. "Follow
quick, Walk-by-night," said Thumb; "a storm is brewing."

The men of the Mountains were all awake, squatting like grasshoppers,
and gossiping together close about their watch-fire. Wind swept from the
mountain-snows, swirling sparks into the air, and streamed moaning into
the ravines. And soon lightning glimmered blue and wan across the
roaring clouds of hail, and lit the enormous hills with glimpses of
their everlasting snows. The travellers sheltered themselves as best
they could, crouched close to the ground. Nod threw himself down and
drew his sheep-skin over his head. His heart was beating thick and fast.
He could think of nothing but his stolen Wonderstone and the dark eyes
of the yellow-haired Water-midden. "Tishnar is angry--Tishnar is angry,"
he kept whispering, beneath the roar of the hail. "She has forsaken me,
Noddle of Pork that Nod is."




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXII


When at last day streamed in silver across the peaks, the storm had
spent itself. But Nod did not stir, nor draw near to the fire to drink
of the hot pepper-water the travellers had brewed against the cold.
Thumb came at last and stooped over him. "Get up now, Ummanodda, little
brother, and do not mope and sulk any more. I was angry because I was
afraid. How should we have gone a day in safety without the Nizza-neela
and his Wonderstone? Come nearer to the fire, and dry your sodden
sheep's-coat."

Nod crept forlornly to the fire, and sat there shivering. He could not
eat. He crouched low on his heels, nor paid any heed to what was said or
done around him. And presently he fell into a cold, uneasy sleep, full
of dreadful dreams and voices. When he awoke, he peered sullenly out of
his jacket, and saw Ghibba with three of the five Moona-mulgars that he
had taken with him sitting hunched up round the fire. They had come back
bruised and bedraggled, and torn with thorns. One of them, stumbling in
the gloom on the green rocks, had fallen headlong into the cataract, and
had not been seen again; and one had been pounced on and carried off by
some unknown beast while they were hobbling back in the torchless
darkness towards the beacon above the cataract. There was no way beyond
the ravine. All was dense low forest, rocks and thorns, and pouring
waterways. And the travellers knew not what to be doing.

Nod could not bear to look at them nor listen to their lisping, mournful
voices. He covered up his face again, weary of the journey and of the
dream of Tishnar's Valleys, weary of his brothers, of the very daylight,
but weariest of himself.

After long palaver, Ghibba came shuffling over to him, and sat down
beside him.

"Is the Mulla-mulgar ill, that he sits alone, hiding his eyes?" he said.

Nod shook his head. "I am in my second sleep, Mountain-mulgar. A little
frost has cankered my bones. It is the Harp Nod hears, not Zevvera's
zōōts."

Ghibba sat with a very solemn look on his grey scarred face. "The
Mulla-mulgars say there can be no turning back, Nizza-neela. And, by the
way I have come, it is certain that there is no going onward. Then, say
they, being Mulgars-of-a-race, we must float with the mountain-water
into the great cavern, and trust our hearts to the fishes. Maybe it will
carry us to where every shadow comes at last; maybe these are the waters
of the Fountains of Assasimmon."

"I see no boat," yapped Nod scornfully. "The only boat my brothers ever
floated in was an old Gunga's Oomgar-nugga's bobberie that now is a nest
in Obea-Munza for Coccadrilloes' eggs."

"Already my people are gathering branches," said Ghibba, "to make
floating mats or rafts, such as I saw one of the Fishing-mulgars
squatting on while he dangled his tail for fish-bait. Comfort your weary
bones, then, Eengenares. Tishnar, who guards you, Tishnar, whose Prince
you are, Tishnar, who feasted even Utts like me on fruits of
sleeping-time, will not forsake us now."

Nod turned cold, and trembling, as if to tell this solemn Man of the
Mountains that his Wonderstone was gone. But he swallowed his spittle,
and was ashamed. So he rose up and listlessly hobbled after him to where
the rest of the travellers were toiling to gather branches for their
rafts.

The storm had snapped and stripped off many branches from the trees.
These the travellers dragged down to the water. Others they hauled down
with Cullum ropes, and some smaller saplings they charred through with
fire at the root. When they had heaped together a big pile of boughs and
Samarak, Cullum and all kinds of greenery, Ghibba and Thumb bound them
clumsily one by one together, letting them float out on to the water,
until the raft was large and buoyant enough to bear two or three Mulgars
with their bags. For one great raft that would have carried them all in
safety would have been too unwieldy to enter the mouth of the cavern,
besides being harder for these ignorant sailors to navigate. The torrent
flowed swiftly into the cavern. And if but two or three sailed in
together, Fortune might drown or lose many in the dark windings of the
mountain-water, but one or two at least might escape.

They toiled on till evening, by which time four strong green rafts
bobbed side by side at their mooring-ropes on the water. Then, tired
out, sore and blistered with their day's labours, the travellers heaped
up a great watch-fire once more, and supped merrily together, since it
might be for many of them for the last time. Nor did the
mountain-mulgars raise their drone for their kinsfolk beneath the
cataract, wishing to keep a brave heart for the dangers before them.

Only Nod sat gloomy and downcast, waiting impatiently till all should be
lying fast asleep. One by one the outwearied travellers laid themselves
down, with the palms of their feet towards the fire. Nod heard the
calling of the beasts in the ravine, and ever and again from far up the
mountain-side broke out the long hungry howl of the little wolves. Only
Nod and the Mountain-mulgar whose turn it was to keep watch were now
awake. He was a queer old Mulgar, blind of one eye, but he could stand
wide awake for hours mumbling in his mouth a shaving of their blue
cheese-rind. And when he had turned his back for a moment on the fire,
Nod wriggled softly away, and, hobbling off into the forest, soon
reached the water-side.

He crept forward under the gigantic dragon-tree, and down the steep bank
to the little creek where he had first heard the singing of the
Water-midden. All was shadowy and still. Only the dark water murmured in
its stony channel, and the faint night-wind rustled in the sedge. Nod
leaned on his belly over the water, and, gazing into it, called as
softly and clearly as his harsh voice could: "Water-midden,
Water-midden, here am I, Ummanodda, come as you bade me."

No one answered. He stooped lower, and called again. "It is me, the
Mulla-mulgar, child of Tishnar, who trusted to you his Wonderstone,
beautiful Midden. Nod, who believed in you, calls--your friend, the
sorrowful Nod!"

"Sing, Mulla-mulgar!" croaked a scornful sedge-bird. "The Princess loves
sweet music."

A lean fish of the changing colours of a cherry swam softly to the
glimmering surface and stared at Nod.

"Tell me, Jacket-of-Loveliness," whispered Nod, "where is thy mistress
that she does not answer me?"

The fish stared solemnly on wavering fin.

"Hsst, brother," said Nod, and let fall a bunch of Soota-berries into
the stream. The fish leapt in the water, and caught the little fruit in
its thin, curved teeth, and nibbled greedily till all was gone.
Whereupon, staring solemnly at Nod once more, he let the leaves and
stalk float onward with the stream, then with a flash and flicker of
tail dived down, down, and was gone. All again was silent. Only the
blazing stars and the shadowy phantoms of the distant firelight moved on
the water.

"O Tishnar," muttered the little Mulgar to himself, "help once this
wretched Nod!"

Suddenly, as he watched, as if it were the amber or ivory beam of a
lantern in the water, he saw a pale brightness ascending. And all in a
moment the Water-midden was there rocking on the dark green water
beneath the arching sedge. But her hands, when Nod looked to see, were
empty, floating like rose-leaves open on the water. But he spoke gently,
for he could not look into her beautiful wild face, and her eyes, that
were like the forest for darkness and the moonlit mountains of Tishnar
for loveliness, and still be angry, nor even sad.

"Tell me, O Water-midden, where is my Wonderstone?" he said.

The Water-midden smoothed slowly back her gold locks. "You told me
false, Mulla-mulgar," she answered. "All day long have I been sitting
rubbing, rubbing with my small tired thumb, but no magic has answered.
It is but a common water-pebble roughened into the beasts' shapes. It
means nothing, and I am weary."

And Nod guessed she had been rubbing the Wonderstone craft to cudgel,
and not as the magic went, sama-weeza--right to left.

"If it is but a water-pebble, give it back to me, then, Midden, for it
was my mother who gave it me."

But the Midden smiled with her red lips. "You did deceive me, then,
Mulla-mulgar, so that you might seem strange and wonderful, and far
above the other hoarse-voiced travellers, the beloved of Tishnar? You
may deceive me again, perhaps. I think I will not give you back your
stone. Perhaps, too," she said, throwing back her tiny chin, so that her
face lay like a flower in leaves of gold--"perhaps I rubbed not wisely.
You shall tell me how."

"Show me, then, my Wonderstone. I am tired out for want of sleep, and
long no more for Tishnar's fountains."

Then the Midden floated out into the middle of the stream, and with one
light hand kept herself in front of Nod, her narrow shoulders slowly
twirling the while in the faintly-rosied starlight. She took with the
other a long thick strand of her hair, and, unwinding it slowly,
presently out of it let fall into her palm the angry-flaming
Wonderstone. "See, Mulla-mulgar, here is your Wonderstone. Now in
patience tell me how to make magic."

And Nod said softly: "Float but a span nearer to me, Midden--a span and
just a half a span."

And the Water-midden drew in a little, still softly twirling.

"Oh, but just a thumb-nail nearer," said Nod.

Laughing, she floated in closer yet, till her beautiful eyes were
looking up into his bony and wrinkled face. Then with a sudden spring he
thrust his hand deep into the silken mesh of her hair and held tight.

She moved not a finger; she still looked laughing up. "Listen, listen,
Midden," he said: "I will not harm you--I could not harm you, beautiful
one, though you never gave me back my Wonderstone again, and I wandered
forsaken till I died of hunger in the forest. What use is the stone to
you now? Tishnar is angry. See how wildly it burns and sulks. Give it,
then, into my hand, and I promise--not a promise, Midden, fading in one
evening--I will give you any one thing else whatsoever it is you ask."

And the Water-midden looked up at him unfrightened, and saw the truth
and kindness in his eyes. "Be not angry with me, little brother," she
answered. "I did not pretend with you, sorrowful Nizza-neela!" And she
dropped the Wonderstone into his outstretched hand.

Tears sprang up into Nod's tired, aching eyes. He smoothed softly with
his hairy fingers the golden strands floating in the ice-cold water.
"Till I die, O beautiful one," he said, "I will not forget you. Tell me
your wish!"

Then the Water-midden looked long and gravely at him out of darkling
eyes. She put out her hand and touched his. "This shall be my sorrowful
wish, little Mulgar: it is that when you and your brothers come at last
to the Kingdom of Assasimmon, and the Valleys of Tishnar, you will not
forget me."

"O Midden," Nod answered, "it needed no asking--that. It may be we shall
never reach the Valleys. For now we must plunge into the water-cavern on
our floating rafts, and all is haste and danger. But I mind no danger
now, Midden. That Mulla-mulgar, my father Seelem, chose to wander, and
not to sit fat and idle with Princes. So, too, would I. Tell me a harder
wish. Ask anything, Water-midden, and my Wonderstone shall give it you."

And the Water-midden gazed sorrowfully into his face. "That is all I
ask, Mulla-mulgar," she repeated softly--"that you will not forget me. I
fear the Wonderstone. All day it has been crickling and burning in my
hair. All that I ask, I ask only of you." So Nod stooped once more over
that gold and beauty, and he promised the Water-midden.

And she drew out a slender, fine strand of her hair, and cut it through
with the sharp edge of a little shell, and she wound it seven times
round Nod's left wrist. "There," she said; "that will bid you remember
me when you come to the end. Have no fear of the waters, Nizza-neela; my
people will watch over you."

And Nod could not think what in his turn to give the Water-midden for a
remembrance and a keepsake. So he gave her Battle's silver groat with
the hole in it, and hung it upon a slender shred of Cullum round her
neck, and he tore off also one of the five out of his nine ivory buttons
that still clung to his coat, and gave her that, too.

"And if my brothers stay here one day more, come in the darkness, O
Water-midden; I shall not sleep for thinking of you." And he said
good-bye to her, kneeling above the dark water. But long after he had
safely wrapped his Wonderstone in the blood-stained leaf from Battle's
little book again, and had huddled himself down beside the slumbering
travellers, he still seemed to hear the forlorn singing of the
Water-midden, and in his eyes her small face haunted, amid the darkness
of his dreams.

All the next morning the travellers slaved at their rafts. They made
them narrow and buoyant and very strong, for they knew not what might
lie beyond the mouth of the cavern. And now the sun shone down so
fiercely that the Mulgars, climbing, hacking, dragging at the branches,
and moiling to and fro betwixt forest and water, teased by flies and
stinging ants, hardly knew what to do for the heat. Thumb and Thimble
stripped off the few rags left of their red jackets, and worked in their
skins with better comfort. And they laughed at Nod for sweating on in
his wool.

"Look, Thumb," laughed Thimble, peering out from under a tower of
greenery, "the little Prince is so vain of his tattered old
sheep's-jacket that he won't walk in his bare an instant, yet he is so
hot he can scarcely breathe."

Nod made no answer, but worked stolidly on, bunched up in his hot
jacket, because he feared if he went bare his brothers would see the
thin strand of bright hair about his wrist, and mock at the Midden.
When the sun was at noon the Mulgars had finished the building of their
rafts. They lay merrily bobbing in a long string moored to an Ollaconda
on the swift-running water. They tied up bundles of nuts, and old
Nanoes, roots, and pepper-pods, and scores of torches, and bound these
down securely to the smallest of the rafts. Then, wearied out, with
sting-swollen chops and bleeding hands, they raised their
shadow-blankets, and having bound up their heads with cool leaves, all
lay down beside the embers of their last night's fire for the "glare."

There were now seventeen travellers, and they had built nine light
rafts--two Mulgars for every raft, except two; one of which two was wide
enough to float in comfort three of the lighter Moona-mulgars, who weigh
scarce more than Meermuts at the best of times; the other and least was
for their bundles and torches and all such stuff as they needed, over
and above what each Mulgar carried for himself.

In the full and stillness of afternoon they ate their last meal this
side of Arakkaboa, and beat out their fire. A sprinkle of hail fell,
hopping on their heads as they stood in the sunshine making ready to put
off. It seemed as if there would never come an end to their labour, and
many a strange face stared down on them from the brooding galleries of
the forest.




[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIII


At last, after fixing a lighted torch between the logs of each raft, the
Mulgars began to get aboard. On the first Ghibba and Thimble embarked,
squatting the one in front and the other astern, to keep their craft
steady. With big torches smoking in the sunshine, they pushed off.
Tugging on a long strand of Samarak which they had looped around the
smooth branch of a Boobab, they warped themselves free. Soon well
adrift, with water singing in their green twigs, they slid swiftly into
the stream, shoving and pulling at their long poles, beating the green
water to foam, as they neared the fork, to keep their dancing catamaran
from drifting into the surge that would have toppled them over the
cataract. The rest of the travellers stood stock-still by the
water-side, gazing beneath their hands after the green ship and its two
sailors, dark and light, brandishing their poles. They followed along
the bank as far as they could, standing lean in the evening beams,
wheezing shrilly, "Illaloothi, Illaloothi!" as Moona and Mulla-mulgar
floated into the mouth of the cavern and vanished from sight.

One after another the rest swept off, their rafts dancing light as corks
on the emerald water, each with its flaming torch fast fixed, and its
two struggling Mulgars tugging at their long water-poles. And as each
raft drifted beneath the lowering arch of the cavern, the Mulgars aboard
her raised aloft their poles for farewell to Mulgarmeerez. Last of all
Thumb loosed his mooring-rope, and with the baggage-raft in tow cast off
with Nod into the stream. Pale sunshine lay on the evening frost and
gloom of the forests, and far in the distance wheeled Kippel, capped
with snow, as the raft rocked round the curve and floated nearer and
nearer to the cavern. Nod squatted low at the stern, his pole now idly
drifting, while behind him bobbed the baggage-raft, tethered by its rope
of Cullum. He stared into the flowing water, and it seemed out of its
deeps, faintly echoing, rang the voice of the sorrowful Water-midden,
bidding him farewell. And when Thumb's back was for a moment turned, he
tore out of the tousled wool of his jacket another of his ivory buttons,
and, lying flat in the leafy twigs, dropped it softly into the stream.
"There, little brother," he whispered to the button, "tell the beautiful
Midden I remembered her last of all things when the hoarse-voiced
Mulgars sailed away!"

Green and dark and utterly still Arakkaboa's southern forests drew
backward, with the westering sun beaming hazily behind their nameless
peaks. Nod heard a sullen wash of water, the picture narrowed, faded,
darkened, and in a moment they were floating in an inky darkness, lit
only by the dim and wavering light of the torches.

The cavern widened as the rafts drew inward. But the Mulgars with their
poles drove them into the middle of the stream, for here the current ran
faster, and they feared their leafy craft might be caught by overhanging
rocks near the cavern walls. A host of long-eared bats, startled from
sleep by the echoing cries and splashings, and the smoke of the torches,
unhooked their leathery hoods, and, mousily glancing, came flitting this
way, that way, squeaking shrilly as if scolding the hairy sailors. They
reminded Nod of the chattering troops of Skeetoes swinging on their
frosty ropes in the gloom of Munza-mulgar. When with smoother water the
raftsmen's shouts were hushed, a strange silence swept down upon the
travellers. Nod glanced up uneasily at the faintly shimmering roof hung
with pale spars. Only the sip and whisper of the water could be heard,
and the faint crackle of the dry torch-wood. Thumb flapped the water
impatiently with his long pole. "Ugh, Ummanodda, this hole of darkness
chills my bones. Sing, child, sing!"

"What shall I sing, Thumb?"

"Sing that jingling lingo the blood-supping Oomgar-mulgar taught you.
How goes it?--'Pore Benoleben.'"

So in the dismal water-caverns of Arakkaboa Nod sang out in his seesaw
voice, to please his brother, Battle's old English song, "Poor Ben, old
Ben."

    "Widecks awas'
       Widevry sea,
     An' flyin' scud
       For companee,
     Ole Benporben
       Keepz watcherlone:
     Boatz, zails, helmaimust,
       Compaz gone.

    "Not twone ovall
       'Is shippimuts can
     Pipe pup ta prove
       'Im livin' man:
     One indescuppers
       Flappziz 'and,
     Fiss-like, as you
       May yunnerstand.

    "An' one bracedup
       Azzif to weat,
     'Az aldy deck
       For watery zeat;
     Andwidda zteep
       Unwonnerin' eye
     Ztares zon tossed sea
       An' emputy zky.
     Pore Benoleben,
     Pore-Benn-ole-Ben!"

When Nod's last quavering drawl had died away, Thumb lifted up his own
hoarse, grating voice in the silence that followed, and as if with one
consent, the travellers broke into "Dubbuldideery."

It seemed as if the walls would shatter and the roof come tumbling down
at their prodigious hullabaloo. The bats raced to and fro. Scores of
fishes pushed up their snouts round Nod's raft, and gazed with curious
faces into the torchlight. The water was all astir with their
disquietude. But in the midst of the song there sounded a shrill and
hasty cry: "Down all!"

Only just in time had Ghibba seen their danger, and almost before the
shrill echo had died away, and Thimble had cast himself flat, their raft
was swirled under a huge rock, blossoming with quartz, that hung down
almost to the surface of the water. Thimble's jacket was ripped collar
to hem as he slid under, lying as close as he could. And the bobbing
raft of baggage behind them was torn away in a twinkling, so that now
all the food and torches the Mulgars had was what each carried for
himself. They dared not stir nor lift their heads, for still the fretted
roof arched close above the water. And so they drifted on and on, their
torches luckily burnt low, until at length the cavern widened, the roof
lifted, and they burst one by one into a great chamber of smooth water,
its air filled strangely with a faint phosphorescence, so that every
spar and jag of rock gleamed softly with coloured light as they paddled
their course slowly through. In this great chamber they stayed awhile,
for there was scarcely any current of water against its pillared sides.
With their rafts clustering and moored together, they shared out equally
what nuts, dry fruit, and unutterably mouldy cheese remained, and
divided the torches equally between them, except that Ghibba, who led
the way, had two for every one of the others.

These thin grey waters swarmed with fish, but all, it seemed, nearly
blind, with scarcely visible eyes above their snouts. Some of the bigger
fish, with clapping jaws, cast themselves in range or hunger against the
rafts. And the Mulgars, seeing their teeth, took good heed to couch
themselves close in the midst of their rafts. The longer they stayed,
the thicker grew the concourse of fish drawn together by the noise and
smell of the travellers, until the cavern echoed with their restless
fins and a kind of supping whisper, as if the fish had speech. So the
Mulgars pushed off again, laying about them with their poles to scare
the bolder monsters off as they gilded softly into the sluggish current,
until the channel narrowed again, and their speed freshened.

On and on they drifted. On and on the shimmering walls floated past
them, now near, now distant. They lost all time. Some said night must be
gone; some said nay, night must have come again; and to some it seemed
like an evil dream, this drifting, without beginning or end. When sleep
began to hang heavily on Thumb's eyelids, he bade Nod lie down and take
his fill of it first, while he himself kept watch. Nod very gladly lay
down as comfortably as he could on the rough and narrow raft, and Thumb
for safety tied him close with a strand of Cullum. He dreamed a hundred
dreams, rocked softly on the sliding raft, all of burning sunshine, or
wild white moonlight, or of icy and dazzling Witzaweelwūlla; but the
Water-midden's beauty haunted all.

He woke into almost pitch-black gloom, and, starting up, could count
only four torches staining the unrippling water with their flare. And,
being very thirsty, he stooped over with hollowed hand, as if to drink.

"No, no," said Thumb drowsily; "not drink, Nod. Sleepy water--sleepy
water. Moona-mulgars there, drunk and drunk; thirstier and thirstier,
torches out--all dead asleep--all dead asleep."

"But my tongue's crackling dry, Thumb. Drink I must, Thumb."

"Nutshells," said Thumb--"suck nutshells, suck them."

Nod took out the last few nuts he had. And in the faint glowing of the
distant torches he could see Thumb's great broad-nosed face turned
hungrily towards them.

"How many nuts left have you, my brother?" Nod said.

Thumb tapped his stomach. "Safe, safe all," he said. "Nod slept on and
on."

"Why did you not wake me, Thumb? Lie down now. I am not hungry, only a
little thirsty. Have these few crackle-shells before you sleep, old
Thumb." He gave Thumb nine out of his thirteen nuts, and partly because
he was ravenously hungry, partly because their oiliness a little
assuaged his thirst, Thumb crunched them up hastily, shells and all.
Then he lay down on the raft, and Nod tied his great body on as safely
as he could.

There seemed to be some tribe of creatures dwelling in this darkness.
For Thumb had but a little while lain down, when the stream bore the
rafts along a smoother wall of rock, which rose, as it were, to a ledge
or shelf; and all along this rocky shelf Nod could see dim, rounded
holes, of a breadth to take with ease the body of a Mullabruk or
Manquabee. He fancied even he saw here and there shadowy figures
stooping out. And now and then in the hush he heard a flappity rustle,
as of some hairy creature scampering quickly along the ledge on four
naked feet. But he called and called in vain. No answer followed, except
a feeble hail from Thimble's raft far ahead, with its torches feebly
twinkling.

Only three of the nine rafts now showed lights, and the last of these
had drifted in, and become entangled in some jutting rock or in the
long, leathery weed that hung like lichen-coloured grass along the sides
of the cavern. As Nod drew slowly near, he saw that on this raft both
its Mulgars lay flat on their faces, lost in their second sleep from
drinking of the water. He pushed hard at his long pole, and, leaning
over, caught their strand of trailing Samarak, and hauled the raft
safely into mid-stream again. He stirred and pommelled the Mulgars with
his pole. But they made no sign of feeling, except that their mouths
fell a little ajar. Then he lit the last but one of his own torches by
the failing flame of theirs. But it hovered sullen and blue. The air was
thick. Each breath he took was heavy as a sigh. He was shrunk very
meagre with travel, and his little breathing bosom was nothing but a
slender cage of bones above his heart. He crouched down in the
whispering solitude. His lips were cracked, his tongue like tinder. He
mumbled his shells in vain between his teeth. But from first sleep to
the second sleep is but a little journey, and thence to the last the way
runs all downhill.

He chafed his eyes, he clenched his teeth, he crooned wheezily all the
songs Battle had taught him. And now once more the cavern opened into a
wide and still lagoon, over whose grey floor phantom lights moved
cloudily before the advancing rafts. Its roof wanly blazed with
crystals. And there was no doubt now of Mulgar inhabitants. They sat
unmoved upon their rocky ledges and parapets, with puffed-out, furry
bodies and immense round, lustrous eyes, with which they steadily
surveyed the worn and matted Mulgars, some stretched in stupid slumber,
some fevered and famished, with burning eyes, drifting slowly past their
glistening grottoes. But none so much as stirred a finger or paid any
heed to the Mulgars' entreaties for food. Only their long ears, which
peaked well out of their wool, twitched and nodded, as if their
ducketings were a kind of secret language between them.

Nod's raft swam last across this weed-mantled lagoon amid the moving
light-wisps. He called with swollen tongue: "O ubjar moose soofree!
ubjar, ubjar, moose soofree!" But there came no answer, not the least
stir in the creatures; only the owl-eyes stared steadily on. He lifted
himself on trembling legs, and called: "Walla, walla!"

These Arakkaboans only gloated on him, and slowly turned their round
heads, still twitching their ears at one another, as if in some strange
talk.

And Nod fell into a Munza rage at sight of them. He danced and gibbered,
and at last caught up his long water-pole, as if to strike at them; but
it was too heavy for him after his long thirst; he over-balanced, threw
out the pole, and fell headlong on to the raft. Thumb muttered in his
sleep, wagging his head. And with parched lips, so close to that
faint-smelling water, Nod could bear his thirst no longer. He leaned
over, cupped his hands, and sucked in one, two, three delicious
mouthfuls. Water, cavern, staring Arakkaboans, seemed to float away into
the distance, as in a dream. And in a little while, with head lolling at
Thumb's feet, he lay faintly snoring beside his brother.

       *       *       *       *       *

Out of the heaviness of that long sleep Nod opened his eyes, to find
Thumb's great body stooping over him with anxious face, shaking and
pommelling him, and muttering harshly: "Wake, wake, Nugget of clay!
Wake, Mulla-slugga! The Valleys! The Valleys, little Ummanodda! Taste,
taste! Ummuz, ummuz, UMMUZ!"

Something sweeter than honey, something that at one taste wakened in
memory Mutta, and Seelem, and the little Portingal's hut, and Glint's
towering Ukka-tree, and all his childhood, was pushed between his teeth.
Nod sneezed three times, struggled, and sat up.

For a moment the light blinded him. Then at last he saw all among a long
low stretch of rushes, in still, green water, between the rafts, a
picture of the sky. A crescent moon hung like a shell in the pale green
quiet of daybreak. He scrambled to his feet, still gnawing his
Ummuz-cane. He saw Thimble mumbling like a hungry dog over his food, and
the lean shapes of the Moona-mulgars shuffling to and fro. On one side
rose the forests of the northern slopes of Arakkaboa. A warm, sweet wind
was moving with daybreak, and only on the heights next the green of the
sky shone Tishnar's unchanging snows. Flowers bloomed everywhere around
him, not vanishing flowers of magic now. And as far as his round eyes
could see, golden with Ummuz and Immamoosa, and silver with dreaming
waters, stretched the long-sought, lovely Valleys of Tishnar. This,
then, was the Mulgars' journey's end!

Nod flung himself down in the long grasses, and cried as if his heart
would break. And still with his oozy stick of Ummuz clutched between his
fingers, he fell asleep.

But soon came Ghibba to waken him. Thumb and Thimble and all the
Moona-mulgars were squatting together round a little fire they had
kindled beneath an enormous tree by the water-side. Bees, that might,
indeed, be honey-makers from Assasimmon's hives, were droning in the
tree-blossoms overhead, and tiny Tominiscoes flitting among the
branches. It was a wonder, indeed, that birds should draw near such
scarecrow travellers. More like the Nōōmad of Jack-Alls they sat
than honest Mulgars; some toasting the last paring of their beloved
cheese to eat with their Nanoes, some with stones pounding Ummuz, some
at their scratching and combing, and one or two worn out, bonily
sprawling in the comfort of the sunbeams streaming upon them now from
far across Arakkaboa.

Beneath them lay the shallows of the green lagoon in the morning. But
near at hand rose up a gigantic grove of Ollacondas into the windless
sky, so that beyond these the travellers could see nothing of the
farther country.

When they had eaten and drunk, and were well rested, Thumb and Nod,
taking again cudgels in their hands, started off towards the hills that
rose above the cavern, of purpose, if need be, to climb into the higher
branches of some tree, from which they might descry, perhaps, what lay
on the other side of this great grove.

Through the thick dews they stumped along together, their eyes roving
this way and that, in wonder and curiosity of their way. And in a while
they had climbed up through the thick undergrowth on to a wide green
ledge, on which were playing and scampering in the fresh shadows a host
of a kind of Weddervols, but smaller and furrier than those of Munza.
And now they could see beneath them the huge arch through which their
rafts had floated out while they lay snoring.

White flocks of long-legged water-birds were preening their wings in the
shadows, in which rock and boughs and farthest snow stood glassed. There
the two Mulgars stood, ragged and worn, snuffing the sweet air, while a
faint surge of singing rose from the forests above their heads.

"It is a big nest Tishnar's water-birds build," said Nod suddenly.

Thumb's great head turned on his stooping shoulders, and, with mouth
ajar, he stared long and closely at what seemed to be a heap of tangled
boughs washed up in the water far beneath them.

"No nest, Ummanodda," he said at last; "it is some Mulgar's tree-roost
fallen into the water. Its leaves are dry, and the feet of that
long-legs stand deep in Spider-flower."

"To my eyes," said Nod slowly, "it looks to me, Thumb, just like such
another as one of our water-rafts."

"Wait here a little while, Nizza-neela," grunted Thumb suddenly; "I go
down to look for eggs."

Nod watched his brother pushing his way down through the sedge and
trailing Samarak. "Eggs," he whispered--"eggs!" and broke out into his
little yapping laughter, though he knew not why he laughed.

Up, up, on sounding wings flew a bird as white as snow from its lodging
as Thumb drew near. And there he was, stooping, paddling, pushing with
his cudgel, and peering into the tangle at the water-side.

Nod turned his head, filled with a sudden weariness and loneliness. And
in the silence of the beautiful mountains he fell sad, and a little
afraid, as do even Oomgar travellers resting awhile in the journey that
has no end.

Out of his Mulgar dreams he was startled by a sudden, sharp, short
Mulgar bark from far beneath, that might be fear or might be sudden
gladness.

And, in a moment, Thumb, having cast down his cudgel, and with something
clutched in his great hand, was swinging and scrambling back through the
thick, flowery undergrowth of the hillside by the way he had come.

Nod watched him, with head thrust forward and side-long, and at last he
drew near, sweating and coughing.

"Sōōtli, sōōtli!" he muttered. "Magic, magic!" and held out
in the sunlight an old red, rotted gun.

Rusty, choked with earth, its butt smashed, its lock long gone, the two
Mulgars stood with the gun between them.

"Oomgar's gun, Thumb?--Oomgar's?" grunted Nod at last.

Thumb opened wide his mouth, still panting and trembling.

"Noos unga unka, Portingal, Ummanodda. Seelem arggutchkin! Seelem! kara,
kara! Seelem mugleer!"

And even as that last Seelem was uttered, and back to Nod's mind came
that morning leagues, leagues away, and himself sitting on his father's
shoulder, clutching the long cold barrel of the little Portingal's
gun--even at that moment a faint halloo came echoing across the steeps,
and, turning, the Mulla-mulgars saw climbing towards them between the
trees Thimble and Ghibba. But not only these. For between them walked
on high in a high, hairy cup, with a band of woven scarlet about his
loins, and a basket of honeycombs over his shoulder, a Mulgar of a
presence and a strangeness, who was without doubt of the Kingdom of
Assasimmon.

[Illustration]




[Illustration: ... A MULGAR OF A PRESENCE AND A STRANGENESS, WHO WAS
WITHOUT DOUBT OF THE KINGDOM OF ASSASIMMON.]




    ENVOY

    "Long--long is Time, though books be brief:
     Adventures strange--ay, past belief--
     Await the Reader's drowsy eye;
     But, wearied out, he'd lay them by.

    "But, if so be he'd some day hear
     All that befell these brothers dear
     In Tishnar's lovely Valleys--well,
     Poor pen, thou must that story tell!

    "But farewell, now, you Mulgars three!
     Farewell, your faithful company!
     Farewell, the heart that loved unbidden--
     Nod's dark-eyed, beauteous Water-midden!"




A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET


_This book is composed (on the Linotype), in Scotch. There is a
divergence of opinion regarding the exact origin of this face, some
authorities holding that it was first cut by Alexander Wilson & Son, of
Glasgow, in 1837; others trace it back to a modernized Caslon old style
brought out by Mrs. Henry Caslon in 1796 to meet the demand for modern
faces brought about by the popularity of the Bodoni types. Whatever its
origin, it is certain that the face was widely used in Scotland, where
it was called Modern Roman, and since its introduction into America it
has been known as Scotch. The essential characteristics of the Scotch
face are its sturdy capitals, its full rounded lower case, the graceful
fillet of its serifs and the general effect of crispness._

[Illustration]

    SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED, AND
    BOUND BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC.,
    BINGHAMPTON, N.Y. · ILLUSTRATION
    PLATES ENGRAVED AND PRINTED BY
    ZEESE-WILKINSON COMPANY, INC.,
    LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y. ·
    PAPER MANUFACTURED BY THE
    TICONDEROGA PULP AND
    PAPER CO., TICONDEROGA,
    N.Y., AND FURNISHED
    BY W. F. ETHERINGTON
    & CO., NEW YORK.




Transcriber's Note:


    In the List of Illustrations, closing quotation marks have been
    added to "with fingers of frost" and "enchanted orchards of Tishnar".

    Spelling and punctuation have been retained as in the original
    publication except as follows:

    Page 23

    sibbetha eena manga Môh!" _changed to_
    sibbetha eena manga Môh!'"

    Page 45

    through the green twlight _changed to_
    through the green twilight

    Page 62

    as for the Water-midden's song _changed to_
    as for the Water-middens' song

    Page 73

    said the Fish-catcher." _changed to_
    said the Fish-catcher.

    Page 113

    awhile with this Oongar _changed to_
    awhile with this Oomgar

    Page 128

    shakes noonday with fear _changed to_
    shakes noonday with fear,

    shakes noonday with fear changed to
    shakes noonday with fear.

    Page 233

    and runing over with _changed to_
    and running over with

    Page 245

    and your brothers, wander _changed to_
    and your brothers wander

    Page 258

    seven time round Nod's left _changed to_
    seven times round Nod's left

    Page 273

    as do even Ooomgar _changed to_
    as do even Oomgar





End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Mulla-mulgars, by Walter De La Mare