The Three Mulla-mulgars Part 18

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

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

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

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

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

"E ... ate it," seemed to be still faintly echoing on his ear in the darkness when Nod found himself wide awake and bolt upright, his face cold and matted with sweat, yet with a heat and eagerness in his heart he had never known before. He scrambled up and crept along in the rosy firelight till he came to the five dead eagles. Their carca.s.ses lay there with frosty feathers and fast-sealed eyes. From one to another he crept slowly, scarcely able to breathe, and turned the carca.s.ses over.

Over the last he stooped, and--a flock, a thread of sheep's wool dangled from its clenched black beak. Nod dragged it, stiff and frozen, nearer the fire, and with his knife slit open the deep-black, shimmering neck, and there, wrapped damp and dingily in its sc.r.a.p of Oomgar-paper, his fingers clutched the Wonderstone. He hastily wrapped it up, just as it was, in the flock of wool, and thrust it deep into his other pocket, and with trembling fingers b.u.t.toned the flap over it. Then he went softly back to his brothers, and slept in peace till morning.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XVII

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

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

But they nibbled and tugged at their slender bird-bones, and peered and waved their long arms in faint talk; though, as their watchman had told Nod in the firelight, they knew they were all within earshot of the Harp.

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

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

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

"Not blind?" said Nod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"His name was Ubbookeera," said Ghibba.

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

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

"Hold my legs, Thumb, my brother, that I may see what they're at," said Nod. Thumb clutched him tight, and Nod edged on his stomach to the end of the bending pole. He saw far down the grey string of the Men of the Mountains dangling, but even the last of them was still twenty or thirty Mulgars off the Tummusc-bush. He heard their shrill chirping. And presently the first sunbeam trembled over the wall of the mountain above them, and beamed clear into the valley. Nod wriggled back to Thumb.

"They cannot reach him," he said. "He lies there huddled up, Thumb, in a Tummusc-bush, just as he fell."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ghibba turned his grave, hairy face to Nod.

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

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

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