e, golden with Ummuz and Immamoosa, and silver with dreaming
waters, stretched the long-sought, lovely Valleys of Tishnar. This,
then, was the Mulgars' journey's end!

Nod flung himself down in the long grasses, and cried as if his heart
would break. And still with his oozy stick of Ummuz clutched between his
fingers, he fell asleep.

But soon came Ghibba to waken him. Thumb and Thimble and all the
Moona-mulgars were squatting together round a little fire they had
kindled beneath an enormous tree by the water-side. Bees, that might,
indeed, be honey-makers from Assasimmon's hives, were droning in the
tree-blossoms overhead, and tiny Tominiscoes flitting among the
branches. It was a wonder, indeed, that birds should draw near such
scarecrow travellers. More like the N[=o][=o]mad of Jack-Alls they sat
than honest Mulgars; some toasting the last paring of their beloved
cheese to eat with their Nanoes, some with stones pounding Ummuz, some
at their scratching and combing, and one or two worn out, bonily
sprawling in the comfort of the sunbeams streaming upon them now from
far across Arakkaboa.

Beneath them lay the shallows of the green lagoon in the morning. But
near at hand rose up a gigantic grove of Ollacondas into the windless
sky, so that beyond these the travellers could see nothing of the
farther country.

When they had eaten and drunk, and were well rested, Thumb and Nod,
taking again cudgels in their hands, started off towards the hills that
rose above the cavern, of purpose, if need be, to climb into the higher
branches of some tree, from which they might descry, perhaps, what lay
on the other side of this great grove.

Through the thick dews they stumped along together, their eyes roving
this way and that, in wonder and curiosity of their way. And in a while
they had climbed up through the thick undergrowth on to a wide green
ledge, on which were playing and scampering in the fresh shadows a host
of a kind of Weddervols, but smaller and furrier than those of Munza.
And now they could see beneath them the huge arch through which their
rafts had floated out while they lay snoring.

White flocks of long-legged water-birds were preening their wings in the
shadows, in which rock and boughs and farthest snow stood glassed. There
the two Mulgars stood, ragged and worn, snuffing the sweet air, while a
faint surge of singing rose from the forests above their heads.

"It is a big nest Tishnar's water-birds build,"