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]