rther they zigzagged betwixt the thorns, the more
doubtful grew the way. For the thorn-trees rise all so equal in height
and thickness they often with their tops shut out the stars, and there
was nothing by which the travellers could mark what way they went.

Still they pressed on, their hairy faces to the night-wind, which Ghibba
had observed before starting was drifting from the north. They shuffled
crisply over the snow, coughing softly, and gurring in their throats,
winding in and out between the trees, and casting lean, gigantic shadows
across the open spaces. For so dazzling bright the moon gleamed, she
almost put out the smoky flare of their torches. But it gave the Mulgars
more courage to march encompassed with their own light. Their packs were
heavy, the thickets sloped continually upward. But the poison-thorns
curl backward beneath the drooping hood of their leaves by night--in the
hours, that is, when, it is said, they distil their poison--so the
travellers were no longer fretted by their stings. Thus, then, they
gradually advanced till M[=o][=o]t was left behind them, and out of the
grey night rose Mulgarmeerez, mightiest of Arakkaboa's peaks, whose
snows have known no Mulgar footprints since the world began.

Only the whish of the travellers' feet on the snow was to be heard, when
suddenly all with one accord stopped dead, as if a voice had cried,
"Halt!"

Their torches faintly crackled, their smoke rising in four straight
pillars towards the stars. And they heard, as if everywhere around them
in the air, clear yet marvellously small voices singing with a thin and
pining sound like glass. It floated near, this tiny, multitudinous
music--so near that the travellers drew back their face with wide-open
eyes. Then it seemed out of the infinite distance to come, echoing
across the moonlit spars that towered above their heads.

And Ghibba said softly, jerking up his bundle and peering around him
from beneath his eye-bandage: "Courage, my kinsmen! it is the
danger-song of Tishnar we hear, who loves the fearless."

At this one of the Men of the Mountains thrust up his pointed chin, and
said, wagging his head: "Why do we march like this at night,
Mulla-moona? These are not our mountain-passes. Let us camp here while
we are still alive, and burn a great watch-fire till morning."

"You have faggots, Cousin of a Skeeto," said Ghibba. "Kindle a fire for
yourself, and catch us up at daybreak."

The Mountain-men la