The Three Mulla-mulgars
by Walter De la Mare · English · Gutenberg #32620 · 412,349 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Three Mulla-mulgars
Author: Walter De la Mare
Illustrator: Dorothy Pulis Lathrop
Release date: May 31, 2010 [eBook #32620]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32620
Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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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
N[=o][=o]manossi--darkness, change, and the unreturning. And
Immanâla is she who preys across these shadows, in this
valley. So, too, the Mulgars say, "N[=o][=o]ma, N[=o][=o]ma,"
when they mean shadow, as "In the sun paces a leopard's
N[=o][=o]ma 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
N[=o][=o]ma passes by. All the inward shadows of the
creatures of Munza-mulgar are N[=o][=o]manossi'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,
N[=o][=o]ma to the dodging Skeetoes she lies in wait for,
stretched along a bough. Her beauty is Tishnar's; the
savagery of her claws is N[=o][=o]manossi's. So Munza's
children are dark or bright, lovely or estranging,
according as Meermut or N[=o][=o]ma 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
N[=o][=o]manossi, 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 Babbab[=o][=o]mas. 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
N[=o][=o]manossi'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 N[=o][=o]manossi. 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 Witzaweelw[=u]lla (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 Bh[=o][=o]sh!"
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 Bh[=o][=o]sh 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. "S[=o][=o]tli,"[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, "S[=o][=o]tli,
S[=o][=o]tli, S[=o][=o]tli," 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 s[=o][=o]tli 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 B[=o][=o]bab 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
N[=o][=o]mas, 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.
"Meelm[=u]tha 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
B[=o][=o]bab-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
B[=o][=o]bab-roots--like B[=o][=o]bab-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 x[=u]t!"
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 N[=o][=o]manossi's harp!"
The old Gunga stooped closer on his fleshless legs and blinked. "What
knows a fly-catching Skeeto of N[=o][=o]manossi'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.
"S[=o][=o]tli, s[=o][=o]tli," 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 B[=o][=o]bab-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 S[=a]maweeza 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 Z[=o][=o]ts
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, "N[=o][=o]m-anossi, N[=o][=o]m-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
S[=a]maweeza, 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 B[=o][=o]bab-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 Z[=o][=o]ts!"
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 Z[=o][=o]t-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 N[=o][=o]manossi'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 Z[=o][=o]ts 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 Sulemn[=a]gar, old hare?" said Nod, pretending utter
bravery. And the wise old Quatta hare pointed out to him where still the
Sulemn[=a]gar 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 B[=o][=o]bab-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 N[=o][=o]manossi
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 N[=o][=o]manossi 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 N[=o][=o]manossi, 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 N[=o][=o]mas 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 Sulemn[=a]gar, "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 Sulemn[=a]gar,
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 N[=o][=o]manossi 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
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