on the Mulgar
who had been chosen to return had rubbed noses and bidden them all
farewell, and had set out on his lonely journey home. Thimble still lay
in a deep sleep, and so cold after the heats of fever that they had to
muffle him twice or thrice in shadow-blankets to regain his warmth.

When they had trudged on a league or so the day began to darken with
cloud. And a thin smoke began to fume up from below. The travellers
pressed on in all haste, so fast that the tongues of the bearers of
Thimble's litter lolled between their teeth. Wind rose in scurries, and
every peak was shrouded. Unnatural gloom thickened around the lean,
straggling troop of Mulgars. And almost before they had time to drive in
their long poles, as shepherds drive in posts for their wattles, and to
swathe and bind themselves close into the sloping rock, the tempest
broke over them. A dense and tossing cloud of ice beat up on the wind,
so that soon the huddled travellers looked like nothing else than a long
low mound on the Mulgar pass, heaped high with the drifting crystals. On
every peak and crest the lightning played blue and crackling. In its
flash the air hung still, bewitched with snow-flakes. Thunder and wind
made such a clamour between them that Nod could scarcely hear himself
think. But the travellers sat mute and glum, and moved never a finger.
Such storms sweep like wild birds through these mountains of Arakkaboa,
and, like birds, are as quickly flown away. For in a little while all
was peace again and silence. And the sun broke in flames out of the pale
sky, shining in peaceful beauty upon the mountains, as if, indeed, the
snow-white Zevveras of Tishnar had passed by.

The travellers soon beat each other free of their snow, and danced and
slapped themselves warm. And now they were rejoiced to see in the
distant clearness peeping above the shoulder of Makkri that league-long
needle Moot. The pass now began to widen, and a little before noonday
they broke out into a broad and steep declivity of snow. And, seeing
that they had but lately rested themselves, and soon would be journeying
in shelter from the sun, they did not tarry for their "glare," or
middle-day sleep.

Their breath hung like smoke on the icy air. They sank at every step
wellnigh up to their middles in snow, and were all but wearied out when
at last they climbed up into a gorge cut sheer between bare walls of
rock, and so lofty on either hand that daylight scarcely trembl