bout very early, combing and grooming
themselves in the dawn-mist for the first time these many days, and
before the sun had shot his first colours across Arakkaboa, they had
eaten and drunk and set out from the valley of the languid and luscious
fruits that had been the chief cause of all their folly.

They pushed up the valley, searching anxiously the hillsides for sign of
any track or path by which they might ascend. The day was crisp and
golden with sunlight. And that evening they made their night-quarters
beside a vast frozen pool in a kind of cup of the overhanging cliffs.
Here every word they said came hollowly back in echo.

They cried, "Seelem!" "Seelem, Seelem!" replied the mocking voices.

"Ummani nata? Still we go on?" shouted Thumb hoarsely.

"Nata, nata! On, on, on!" sang echo hoarselier yet.

Wind had swept clean the glassy floor. In its black lustre gleamed the
increasing moon. And after dark had fallen, mists arose and trailed in
moonlit beauty across the granite escarpments of the hills. So that
night the travellers lay in a vast tent of lovely solitude, with only
the strange noises of the ice and the whisperings of the frost to tell
poor wakeful Nod he was anything more than a little Mulgar in a dream.

Next morning early they met one of those crack-brained Moh-mulgars that
wander, eat, sleep, live, and die alone, having broken away from all
traffic and company with their friends and kinsmen. He wore about his
neck a double-coiled necklet of little bones, and wound round his middle
a plait of Cullum. He was dirty, bowed, and matted, and his eyes were
glazed as he lifted them into the sunlight in answer to Thumb's shout:

"Tell us, O Moh-mulgar, we beseech you, how shall three travellers to
the kingdom of Assasimmon find a pathway across these hills?"

The Moh-mulgar lifted both gnarled hands above his head.

"Geguslar n[=o][=o]ma gulmeta m[=u]h!" replied a thick, half-brutal
voice.

"What does he say?" said Nod, wondering to see him wave his spotted arms
as he wagged his crazy head.

"Well," says Thumb, "what he says is this: 'Death's at the end of _all_
paths.'"

Thimble coughed. "So it is," he said solemnly.

"Ay," said Thumb; "but what _I_ was asking was the longest way round....
A track, a path to the beautiful Valleys of Tishnar," he shouted across
to the solitary Moh-mulgar. Sorrowfully he waved his bony arms about
his head, and stooped again. "Geguslar, n[=o][=o]ma gulmeta m[=u]h!