ughed wheezily, for now the singing had died away. On
they pushed again. But now the thorn-trees gathered yet closer together,
so that the Mulgars could no longer walk in company, but had to straggle
up by ones or twos as best they could. Still up and up they clambered,
laying hold of the thick tufts of leaves sticky with poison to drag
themselves forward. Many times they had to pause to recover their
breath, and Nod turned giddy to look down on the moon-dappled forest
through which they had so heavily ascended. Thus they continued, until,
quite without warning, Thumb, who was leading, broke out into one loud,
hard, short bark of fear, for he suddenly found himself standing beneath
contorted branches on the verge of another and wider plateau of snow. He
stood motionless, leaning heavily on his cudgel, the knuckles of his
other hand resting in the snow, his breath caught back, and his head
stooping forward between his shoulders, staring on and on between
astonishment and fear.

[Illustration: FOR THERE ... STOOD AS IF FROZEN IN THE MOONLIGHT
THE MONSTROUS SILVER-HAIRED MEERMUTS OF MULGARMEEREZ, GUARDING
THE ENCHANTED ORCHARDS OF TISHNAR.]

For there, all along the opposite ridge, as it were on the margin of an
enormous platter, stood as if frozen in the moonlight the monstrous
silver-haired Meermuts of Mulgarmeerez, guarding the enchanted orchards
of Tishnar. Thumb stood in deep shadow, for instantly, at sight of these
shapes, as one by one the travellers came straggling up together, they
quenched their hissing torches in the snow. No sign made the Meermuts
that they had seen the little quaking band of lean and ragged Mulgars.
But even a squirrel cracking a nut could have been heard across these
windless and icy altitudes. And even now it seemed that bark of fear
went echoing from spur to spur. The wretched Mulgars could only stand
and gaze in helpless confusion at the phantoms, whose eyes shone
dismally in the moon beneath their silver hair and great purple caps.
The Meermuts stood, as it were, for a living rampart all down the
untrodden snow towards the great Pit of Mulgarmeerez till lost in the
faint grey mists of the mountains.

"What's to be done now, Prince of Ladder-makers?" said Thumb presently.
"Are we not weary of wandering? There's room for us all in those great
shadowy bellies."

"Itthiluthi thoth 'Meermut' onnoth anoot oonoothi," lisped one of the
Moona-mulgars--that is to say, in their own l