sed legs before a blazing fire. It shone on his fangs and
teeth and flaming eyes. A huge axe, made out of a stone, hung on the
wall. In one corner lay a heap of brushwood and fish-bones, and in a
hole in the ground a pile of logs. There were skins, too, on the walls
of fishes and birds and little furry beasts, and two fat hog-fish shone
silvery in the fire-light. Besides these, there was an Oomgar-nugga's
bow of wood, thrice strung with twisted string. But what pleased Nod
most to see, as he peeped stealthily down through the thorny wattle
window, was an old grey Burbhrie cat, which sat washing her face in
front of the fire.

He was still peeping and peering into the hut, when Thumb pinched his
leg to bid him come down. So he slid cautiously down Thimble's back into
the cold moonlight again, and told his brothers all he had seen.

"Yes, Mulla-mulgars," he said, "and beside his bow and his sharp-nosed
darts, he has three big knubbly cudgels in the corner higher than is
Nod. He sits there, muttering and chuffing and sticking a long wood spit
in his soup, and then he coughs and says 'Ug!' and beats his black fists
on his chest till the flames shake."

Thumb's short thick scalp twitched to and fro as he sat on his heels,
staring into the moonlight. "Is he very big and strong? Is he as broad
and thick as Thumb?" he said.

"He's sitting in a spangly shirt," said Nod, "and his arms are like
B[=o][=o]bab-roots--like B[=o][=o]bab-roots--and his eyes,
Mulla-mulgars, they burn in bony houses, and his face is black as
charcoal."

Thumb lifted his face uneasily and yawned. "We will push on; we will not
meddle with the Gunga, my brothers," he said. "Better sleep cold than
never wake." He laughed, and patted Nod on the head with his
stump-thumbed hand, just as Seelem used to do when Nod was a baby. So
they crept softly past the huddle on their fours, turning their heads
this way, that way, snuffing softly along on an icy path that led
through the sword-grass to the river's edge. And there, tossing lightly
on the water, they found a boat, or Bobberie, of Bemba-wood and skin
pegged down with wooden pegs. It was moored fast with a rope of Samarak,
and two broad paddles lay inside it. All this the travellers saw faintly
in the moonlit dusk. Far away they heard the barking and weeping of
Coccadrilloes as they stooped together over the Bobberie, rising and
falling on the gloomy water.

"Let us not trouble the Gunga at his supper," sa