"What'sthese, 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 willnotgo. 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 addedunder 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 andcame 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, Mulgarmio, 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.
Thesun 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 froon 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 smallcreeping 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 askthe 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 outin 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 kickingin 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—backnow. Who can climb mountains with a fat hulk who takes two breaths to anUkka-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. Sohe 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 eveninghe 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. Andthere 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.
Nextday 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 ofallpaths.'"
Thimble coughed. "So it is," he said solemnly.
"Ay," said Thumb; "but whatIwas 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 Mountainshave 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. Butthere 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,musthave 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 birdscreamed 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 fromtrembling 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 depthso 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.