anguage, "But maybe these
Meermuts gnaw before swallowing."

As for Ghibba, he feigned that his eyes were too weak and sore, and
peered in vain beneath his bandages. "Tell me what's to be seen,
Mulla-mulgar," he said. "Why do we linger? The frost's in my toes. Up
with fresh torches and go forward."

Thumb grunted, but made no answer. Then Ghibba drew softly back into the
deeper shadow, and the rest of the Mulgars, who by now were all come
up, stood whispering, some in perplexity, not knowing what to do; some
itching and sniffing to go forward, and one or two for turning back. One
Moona-mulgar, indeed, mewing like a cat in his extreme fear, when he had
heard Thumb's sudden bark, had turned lean shanks and hairy arms and
fled down by the way they had come. Fainter and fainter had grown the
sounds of snapping twigs, until all again was silent.

"What wonder our father Seelem stumbled as he ran?" muttered Nod to
Thumb.

But Ghibba stood thinking, the skin of his forehead twitching up and
down, as is the habit of nearly all Mulgars, high and low. "This is our
riddle, O Mulla-mulgars," he said: "If we turn back and climb slowly
upward, so as to creep round in hiding from these giant Meermuts, we
shall only come at last to batter our heads against the walls of
M[=o][=o]t. And M[=o][=o]t I know of old: there the Gunga-moonas make
their huddles. And the other way, under the moon, there juts a precipice
five thousand Mulgars deep, through which, so the old news goes, creeps
slowlier than moss Tishnar's never-melting Obea of ice. Here, then, is
our answer, Princes: The valleys must be yet many long days' journey.
Either, then, we go straight forward beneath the feet of Tishnar's
Orchard-meermuts, like forest-mice that gambol among a Mutti of
Ephelantoes, or else, like shivering Jack-Alls, we go back, to live out
the rest of this littlest of lives itching, but having nowhere to
scratch. What thinks the Mulgar Eengenares?"

And at that Nod remembered what the watchman had said, when they were
talking together by the eagles' watch-fires. He touched Thumb, speaking
softly in Mulgar-royal. "Thumb, my brother, what of the Wonderstone?
what of the Wonderstone? Shall we tell this Moona-mulgar of that?"

Thumb laughed sulkily. "Seelem kept all his wits for you, Jugguba," he
answered; "rub and see!"

So Nod spread open his pocket-flap and fetched out the Wonderstone,
wrapped in its wisp of wool and the stained leaf of paper from Bat