When they had trudged on a league or so the day began to darken with cloud. And a thin smoke began to fume up from below. The travellers pressed on in all haste, so fast that the tongues of the bearers of Thimble"s litter lolled between their teeth. Wind rose in scurries, and every peak was shrouded. Unnatural gloom thickened around the lean, straggling troop of Mulgars. And almost before they had time to drive in their long poles, as shepherds drive in posts for their wattles, and to swathe and bind themselves close into the sloping rock, the tempest broke over them. A dense and tossing cloud of ice beat up on the wind, so that soon the huddled travellers looked like nothing else than a long low mound on the Mulgar pa.s.s, heaped high with the drifting crystals. On every peak and crest the lightning played blue and crackling. In its flash the air hung still, bewitched with snow-flakes. Thunder and wind made such a clamour between them that Nod could scarcely hear himself think. But the travellers sat mute and glum, and moved never a finger.
Such storms sweep like wild birds through these mountains of Arakkaboa, and, like birds, are as quickly flown away. For in a little while all was peace again and silence. And the sun broke in flames out of the pale sky, shining in peaceful beauty upon the mountains, as if, indeed, the snow-white Zevveras of Tishnar had pa.s.sed by.
The travellers soon beat each other free of their snow, and danced and slapped themselves warm. And now they were rejoiced to see in the distant clearness peeping above the shoulder of Makkri that league-long needle Moot. The pa.s.s now began to widen, and a little before noonday they broke out into a broad and steep declivity of snow. And, seeing that they had but lately rested themselves, and soon would be journeying in shelter from the sun, they did not tarry for their "glare," or middle-day sleep.
Their breath hung like smoke on the icy air. They sank at every step wellnigh up to their middles in snow, and were all but wearied out when at last they climbed up into a gorge cut sheer between bare walls of rock, and so lofty on either hand that daylight scarcely trembled down to them at the bottom.
So steep and glazed with ice was this gorge or gully that they were compelled to tie themselves together with strands of Cullum. They laid Thimble"s litter on three long pieces of wood strapped together. Then, Ghibba going foremost, one by one they followed the ascent after him, stumbling and staggering, and heaving at the Cullum-rope to drag up poor Thimble on his slippery bed.
The Men of the Mountains have bristly feet and long, hairy, hard-nailed toes. But Thumb and Nod, with their naked soles and shorter toes, could scarcely clutch the icy path at all, and fell so often they were soon stiff with bruises. Worse still, there frequents in the upper parts of these mountains a kind of witless or silly Mulgars, who are called Obobbomans, with very long noses. And just as men use a spygla.s.s for sight, to magnify things and to bring things at a distance nearer, so these Obobbomans use their prolonged noses for smell. Long before Thumb and his company were come to their precipitous gully they had sniffed them out. And, being as mischievous as they are dull-witted, they had already scampered about, gathering together great heaps of stones, and had now set themselves in a row, sniffing and chattering, along the edge of the rock on both sides, and waited there concealed in ambush.
When the Men of the Mountains had climbed up some little way into the gorge, and were scrambling and stumbling on the ice, these Obobbomans began pelting them as fast as they could with their stones and s...o...b..a.l.l.s and splinters of ice. These missiles, though not very large, fell heavily down the walls of the precipice. And soon the whole caravan of Mulgars was brought to a standstill, they were so battered and bewildered by the stones.
As soon as the travellers stopped, these knavish Long-noses ceased to pelt them. So cautious and furtive are they that not a sign of them could be distinguished by the Mulgars staring up from below, though, indeed, a hundred or more of their thin snouts were actually protruded over the sides of the chasm, sniffing and trembling.
"Does it always rain pebble-stones and lumps of ice in these miserable hills?" said Thumb bitterly.
And Ghibba told him that it was the Long-nose mulgars who were molesting them. They squatted down to breathe themselves, hoping to tire out the Obobbomans. But the instant they stirred, down showered s...o...b..ll, ice, and stones once more. The travellers bound f.a.ggots and blankets over their heads, and struggled on, but the f.a.ggots kept slipping loose, and did not cover their stooping backs and b.u.t.tocks. They shouted, threatened, shook their hands towards the heights; one or two even flung pebbles up that only bounced down upon their own heads again. It was all in vain. They halted once more, and squatted down in despair. To add to their misery, it was so cold in this gorge that the breath of the Hill-mulgars froze in long icicles on their beards, and whensoever they turned to speak to one another, or if they sneezed (as they often did in the cold, and with the snuff-like ice-dust), their fringes tinkled like gla.s.s. At last Ghibba, who had been sitting lost in thought of what to be doing next, suddenly groped his way forward, and bade two of his people sit down to their firesticks to make fire.
"What is this Whisker-face tinkering at now?" muttered Thumb. "What is he after now? We had best have come alone."
"I know not," said Nod; "but if he can fight Noses, Thumb, as well as he can fight Beaks, we shall soon be getting on again."
They crouched miserably in the snow, huddled up in shadow-blankets. The Obobbomans peeped further into the ravine, chattering together, at a loss to understand why the travellers were sitting there so still. But at last fire came to the firesticks, and Ghibba then bade two or three of his Mountaineers kindle torches. Whereupon he gave to each a bundle of the eagle feathers which they had plucked from the five carca.s.ses on the pa.s.s, and told them to burn them piecemeal in their torches.
"Ghost of a Moh-man!" grunted Thumb sourly; "he has lost his cheesy wits!"
With feathers fizzling, away they went again, slipping, staggering, and straining at the rope. Down at once hailed the stones again, the Obobbomans gambolling and squealing with delight in their silly mischief. And now no longer little were the s...o...b..a.l.l.s, for the Long-noses all this time had been busy making big ones. These four or five of them, shoving together, with noses laid sidelong, rolled slowly to the edge, and pushed over. Down they came, bounding and rebounding into the abyss, and broke into fragments on the travellers" heads. Some, too, of the craftier of the Long-noses had mingled stones and ice in these great b.a.l.l.s.
Thumb groaned and sweated in spite of the cold, for he, being by far the fattest and broadest of the travellers, received the most stones, and stumbled and fell far more often than the rest on his clumsy feet on the ice. Now, however, the smoke of the burning bunches of eagles" feathers was mounting in pale blue clouds through the gorge. It was enough. At the first sniff and savour of this evil smoke the Long-noses paused in their mischief, coughing and sneezing. At the next sniff they paused no longer. Away they scampered headlong, higgledy-piggledy, toppling one over another in their haste to be gone, squealing with disgust and horror; and the travellers at last were left in peace.
"I began to fear, O Man of the Mountains," grunted Thumb to Ghibba, "that your wits had got frostbitten. But I am not too old nor fat to learn wisdom."
Ghibba lifted his face and peered from under the bandage he had wound over his sore eyes into Thumb"s bruised face. "Munza or Mountains, there"s wisdom for all, brave traveller," he said. "They are very old friends of ours, these Long-noses; they could smell out a mouse"s Meermut in the moon."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XVIII
The pa.s.s grew ever steeper, but now that the travellers were no longer pestered by the Obobbomans they managed to struggle slowly on. And near about sunset they had tugged their way to the top, and came out again upon the mountain-side. They spread out their blankets and threw themselves down, panting, bruised, and outwearied. But they made no fire here yet, because their wood was running short, and all that they had would be needed against the small hours of the night. They nibbled at their blue cheese and a few cold eagle-bones, and, having cut one of their skin-bags to pieces, broke up the frozen milk and shared the lumps between them.
Thumb and Nod crouched down beside Thimble, who was now awake and in his own mind. And they told him all that had happened since his megrims had come on. He was still weak and fretful, and turned his eyes hastily from sight of the mouldy cheese the Mountain-mulgars were nibbling. But he sucked a few old Ukka-nuts. Then they lifted him gently, and with an arm round Thumb"s neck and a hand on Nod"s shoulder, they walked him awhile quietly in the snow.
While the brothers were thus walking friendly together, Ghibba groped his way up to them.
"I come, Royal Travellers," he said, "to tell you that here our country ends. Zut lies now behind us. Yonder stretches the Shadow Country, and my people know the way no farther."
The three brothers turned their heads to look, and on their cudgel-hand, about two leagues distant, stood Solmi; to the west, and a little in front of them, Moot and Makkri. Upon the topmost edge of the snow-slope at the foot of which they were now encamped ran a long, low border of a kind of thorn-bush, huddling among great rocks and boulders, resembling a little the valleys of the Babbaboomas.
"You mean, O Man of the Mountains, whose friendship has been our very lives to us," said Thumb, "that now we must journey on alone?"
"No, Mulla-mulgar; I mean only that here the Moona country, my people"s country, ends, and therefore that I cannot now be certain of the way to the Valleys of Tishnar. But this I do know: that beyond here is thick with the snares of Noomanossi. But if the Mulgar Princes and the Nizza-neela Eengenares, who saved my kinsman"s life, would have it so, and are not weary of our company, then I and my people will journey on with them till they come to an end. We know from childhood these desolate mountains. They are our home. We eat little, drink little, and can starve as quietly as an icicle can freeze. If need be (and I do not boast, Mulla-mulgars), we Thin-shanks can march softly all day for many days, and not fall by the way. We are, I think, merely Leather-men, not meant for flesh and blood. But the Mulla-mulgars have fought with us, and we are friends. And I myself am friend to the last sleep of the small Prince, Nizza-neela, who has the colour of Tishnar in his eyes.
Shall it be farewell, Travellers? Or shall we journey on together?"
The brothers looked at the black and thorn-set trees, at the towering rocks, at the wastes of the beautiful snows. They looked with astonishment at this old, half-blind mountaineer with his lean, sinewy arms, and hill-bent legs, and his bandaged eyes. And Thumb lifted his hands in salutation to Ghibba, as if he were a Mulla-mulgar himself.
"Why should we lead you into strange dangers, O Man of the Mountains,"
he grunted--"maybe to death? But if you ask to come with us, if we have only to choose, how can I and my brothers say no? We will at least be friends who do not part while danger is near, and though we never reach the Valley, Tishnar befriends the Meermuts of the brave. Let us, then, go on together."
So Ghibba went back to his people, and told them what Thumb had said.
And being now agreed together, they all hobbled off but three, who were left to guard the bundles, to break and cut down wood, and to see if perhaps among the thorns grew any nut-trees. But they found none; and for their pains were only scratched and stung by these waste-trees which bear a deadly poison in their long-hooked thorns. This poison, like the English nettle, causes a terrible itch to follow wherever the thorns scratch. So that the travellers could get no peace from the stinging and itching except by continually rubbing the parts in snow wherever the thorns had entered.
And Nod, while they were stick-gathering, kept close to Ghibba.
"Tell me, Prince of the Mountains," he said, "what are these nets of Noomanossi of which you spoke to my brother Thumb? What is there so much to fear?"
Ghibba had sat himself down in the snow to pluck a thorn out of his foot. "I will tell the Prince a tale," he said, stooping over his bundle.
"Long time ago came to our mountains a Mulgar travelling alone. My kinsmen think oftener of him than any stranger else, because, Mulla-mulgar, he taught us to make fire. He was wayworn and full of courage, but he was very old. And he, too, was journeying to the Valleys of Tishnar. But he was, too, a silent Mulgar, never stirred his tongue unless in a kind of drone at evening, and told us little of himself except in sleep."
"What was he like?" said Nod. "Was he mean and little, like me, or tall and bony, like my brother Thimble, or fat, like the Mulla-mulgar, my eldest brother, Thumb?"
"He was," said Ghibba, "none of these. He was betwixt and between. But he wore a ragged red jacket, like those of the Mulgars, and on his woman-hand stood no fourth finger."
"Was the little woman-finger newly gone, or oldly gone?" said Nod.
"I was younger then, Nizza-neela, and looked close at everything. It was newly gone. The stump was bald and pale red. He was, too, white in the extreme, this old Mulgar travelling out of Munza. Every single hair he carried had, as it were, been dipped in Tishnar"s meal."
"I believe--oh, but I do believe," said Nod, "this poor old traveller was my father, the Mulla-mulgar Seelem, of the beautiful Valleys."
"Then," said Ghibba, jerking his f.a.ggot on to his back, and turning towards the camp, "he was a happy Mulgar, for he has brave sons."
"Tell me more," said Nod. "What did he talk about? Did he speak ever of Ummanodda? How long did he stay with the Mulla-moonas? Which way did he go?"
"Lead on, then," said Ghibba, peering under his bandage.
"Here go I," said Nod, touching his paw.
"He followed the mountain-paths with my own father," said Ghibba, "and lived alone for many days in one of our Spanyards,[7] for he was worn out with travel, and nearly dead from lying down to drink out of a Quickkul-fish pool. But after five days, while he was still weak, he rose up at daybreak, crying out in Munza-mulgar he could remain with us no longer. So my people brought him, as I have brought you, to this everlasting snow-field, where he said farewell and journeyed on alone."
[7] I suppose, huts or burrowings.
"Had he a gun?" said Nod.