ys 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 zoube 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 ame