e? And in a flash came back to his
outwearied, aching head remembrance of how, in the height of the
eagle-fighting, there had come the plunge of a lean, gaping beak and the
sudden rending of his coat. Vanished for ever was Tishnar's Wonderstone,
then. The Valleys faded, N[=o][=o]manossi drew near.

He sat there with chattering teeth, his little skull crouching in his
wool, worn out with travel and sleeplessness, and the tears sprang
scalding into his eyes. What would Thumb say now? he thought bitterly.
What hope was left for Thimble? He dared not wake them, but stooped
there like a little bowed old man, utterly forlorn. And so sitting,
cunning Sleep, out of the silence and darkness of Arakkaboa, came
softly hovering above the troubled Nizza-neela; he fell into a shallow
slumber. And in this witching slumber he dreamed a dream.

He dreamed it was time gone by, and that he was sitting on his log again
with his master, Battle, just as they used to sit, beside their fire.
And the Oomgar had a great flat book covering his knees. Nod could see
the book marvellously clearly in his dream--a big book, white as a dried
palm-leaf, that stretched across the sailor knee to knee. And the sailor
was holding a little stick in his hand, and teaching him, as he used in
a kind of sport to do, his own strange "Ningllish" tongue. Before,
however, the sailor had taught the little Mulgar only in words, by
sound, never in letters, by sight. But now in Nod's dream Battle was
pointing with his little prong, and the Mulgar saw a big straddle-legged
black thing in the book strutting all across the page.

"Now," said the Oomgar, and his voice sounded small but clear, "what's
that, my son?"

But Nod in his dream shook his head; he had never seen the strange shape
before.

"Why, that's old 'A,' that is," said Battle; "and what did old
straddle-legs 'A' go for to do? What did 'A' do, Nod Mulgar?"

And Nod thought a voice answered out of his own mouth and said: "A ...
Yapple-pie."

"Brayvo!" cried the Oomgar. And there, sure enough, filling plump the
dog's-eared page, was a great dish something like a gourd cut in half,
with smoke floating up from a little hole in the middle.

"A--Apple-pie," repeated the sailor; "and I wish we had him here,
Master Pongo. And now, what's this here?" He turned the page.

Nod seemed in his dream to stand and to stare at the odd double-bellied
shape, with its long straight back, but in vain. "Bless ye, Nod Mulga