his other pocket, and
with trembling fingers buttoned the flap over it. Then he went softly
back to his brothers, and slept in peace till morning.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII

When he awoke, bright day was on the mountains. The little snow-wolves
had slunk back to their holes and lairs. The fires burned low. And
Thimble lay in a sleep so quiet and profound it seemed to Nod the heart
beneath the sharp-ribbed chest was scarcely stirring. It was bitter cold
on these heights in the sunlessness of morning. And Nod was glad to sit
himself down beside one of the wood-fires to eat his breakfast of nuts,
and swallow a suppet or two of the thawed Mulgar-milk. But the Men of
the Mountains had plucked and roasted the eagles, and were squatting,
with not quite such doleful faces as usual, picking with pointed, rather
catlike teeth, the bones.

Nod could not help watching them under his eyebrows, where they sat,
with tail-tufts over their shoulders, in their fleecy hair, blinking
mildly from their pale pink eyes. For, though here and there may be seen
a Mountain-mulgar with eyes blue as the turquoise, by far the most of
them have pink, and some (but these are what the Oomgar-nuggas would
call Witch-doctors, or Fulbies) have one of either. They looked timid
and feeble enough, these Moona-mulgars, yet with what fearless fury had
they fought with the eagles! How swiftly they shambled dim-sighted along
these wrinkled precipices! Some even now were seated on the rocky verge
as easily as a Skeeto in its tree-top, their lean shanks dangling over.
But they nibbled and tugged at their slender bird-bones, and peered and
waved their long arms in faint talk; though, as their watchman had told
Nod in the firelight, they knew they were all within earshot of the
Harp.

Ghibba was sitting a little away from the others, eating with his eyes
shut.

"Are you so sleepy, Prince of the Mountains, that you keep your eyes
shut in broad day?" said Nod.

Ghibba wagged his head. "No, Mulla-mulgar, I am not sleepy; but one eye
is scorched with the fire and one a little angry with the eagles, so
that I can scarcely see at all."

"Not blind?" said Nod.

Ghibba opened his eyes, red and glittering. "Nay, twilight, not night,
little Mulgar," he answered cheerfully. "I see no more of you than a
little brown cloud against black mountains."

"But how will you walk on these narrow, icy shelves?" said Nod.

"Why," says he, "I have a tail, Mulgar