iet 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 leagu