e could see a great blue
star shining right over their thin column of smoke, winding into the
air. And now from the ravine into which Ghibba had gone down with his
five Moona-men the milk-pale mists began softly to overflow, as if from
a pot filled to the brim. If only Ghibba would come back!

Nod scrambled up, and rather warily shuffled past the sleepers over to
the other beacon-fire they had kindled. A few strange little
night-beasts scuttled away as he drew near, attracted by the warmth of
the fire, or even, perhaps, taking refuge in its shine from the
night-hunting birds that wheeled and whirred in the air above them.
"Urrckk, urck!" croaked one, swinging so close that Nod felt the fan of
its wings on his cheek. "Starving Mulgars, urrckk, urck!" it croaked.

He heaped up the fire. But he could not see a hand's breadth into the
ravine. Calm and still the mist lay, and softer than wool. Nod wandered
restlessly back, passed again the camping Mulgars, and hobbled across
till he came to the rocky bank of the torrent near to where it forked.
Here a faint reflection of the flamelight fell, and Nod could see the
drowsy fish floating coloured and round-eyed in the sliding water. And
while he was standing there, he thought, like the sound of an ooboe
singing amid thunder, he seemed to hear on the verge of the roar of the
cataract a small wailing voice, not of birds, nor of Mulgars, nor like
the phantom music of Tishnar. He crept softly down and along the
water-side, under a black and enormous dragon-tree. And beneath the
giant sedge he leaned forward his little hairy head, and as his
flame-haunted eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he perceived in the
dark-green dusk in which she sat a Water-midden sitting low among the
rushes, singing, as if she herself were only music, an odd little
water-clear song.

"Bubble, Bubble,
Swim to see
Oh, how beautiful
I be.

"Fishes, Fishes,
Finned and fine,
What's your gold
Compared with mine?

"Why, then, has
Wise Tishnar made
One so lovely,
Yet so sad?

"Lone am I,
And can but make
A little song,
For singing's sake."

Her slim hands, her stooping shoulders, were clear and pale as ivory,
and Nod could see in the rosy glimmering of the flames her narrow,
beautiful face reflected amid the gold of her hair upon the formless
waters. Mutta-matutta once had told Nod a story about the Water-m