ont, came
to a standstill.

"What is it, Thumb?" said Nod.

"Why do you stop, Nod?" said Thimble, who was last of all.

"Look, look!" said Thumb.

They slowly raised their eyes, and not a hundred paces beyond them, on
the same narrow ledge of rock against the deep blue sky, came slowly
winding down thirty at least of these same meagre and hairy Men of the
Mountains, a few with long staves in their hands, and every one with his
long tufted tail over his shoulder and a round shallow basket on his
head. These Men of the Mountains have very weak eyes; and it was not
until they were come close that they perceived the three travellers
standing on their mountain-path. The first stopped, then he that was
next, and so on, until they looked like a long black-and-white
caterpillar, clinging to the precipice, with tiny tufts waving in the
air.

Thumb raised his hand as if in peace. "We are, sirs, strangers to these
rocks and hills. After the shade of Munza, our eyes dizzy with the
heights. And we walk, journeying to the Courts of Assasimmon, in great
danger of falling. How, then, shall we pass by?"

They heard a faint, shrill whispering all along the hairy row. Then the
first of the Men of the Mountains came quite close, and told the three
brothers to lie down flat on their faces, and he and his thirty would
all walk gently over them. "But to go on has no end," he said, "and the
travellers had better far turn back."

At this Thumb grew angry. "What does the old grey-beard mean?" he
coughed out of the corner of his mouth. "Mulla-mulgars stoop on their
faces to no one. Do you lie down on yours."

The old Mountain-mulgar blinked. "We are thirty; you are three," he
said. Thumb laughed.

"We are strangers to Arakkaboa, O Man of the Mountains. And we fear to
lie down, lest we never rise up again." At this civil speech the old
Mulgar went shuffling back to the others.

And, to Nod's astonishment, he presently saw him take his long staff of
tough, sinewy wood, and thrust it into a little crevice of the rock,
even with the path, so that about a third of its length overhung the
precipice. Meanwhile, another of these Mountain-mulgars had in the same
way thrust his staff into the rock a little farther down. The first Man
of the Mountains, who was, perhaps by half a span, taller than the rest,
took firm hold of the end of his staff with his long-fingered but almost
thumbless hands, and lightly swung himself down over the precipice.