at then?" said he.

"Then Tishnar's Meermuts would come with their silver thongs and drive
you squalling into the water. And the Middens would pick your eyes out,
Master Fish-catcher."

"I promise, I promise," said the old Gunga, and his enormous body
trembled.

"Where is this talked-of Bobberie?" said Nod solemnly. "Was it that old
log Nod saw when whispering with the Water-middens?"

"Follow, follow," said the other. "I'll show the Prince this log." But
first Nod stooped under the bench, and pulled out his sheep's-coat and
put it on. Then he followed the old Fish-catcher down his frosty path
between its banks of snow, clear now in the silver shining of the moon.

The Fish-catcher showed him everything--how to untie the knotted rope of
Samarak, how to use the paddles, where the mooring-stone for deep water
was. He held it up in his hand, a great round stone as big as a
millstone. Nod listened and listened, half hiding his face in his jacket
lest the Gunga-mulgar should see him laughing. Last of all, the
Fish-catcher, lifting him lightly in his hand, pointed across the turbid
water, and bade him have care not to drift out far in his fishing, for
the stream ran very swiftly, the ice-floes or hummocks were sharp, and
under the Shining-one, he said, snorting River-horses and the weeping
Mumbo lurk.

"Never fear, Master Fish-catcher," said Nod. "Tishnar will watch over
me. How many big fish, now, can the old Glutton eat in comfort?"

The Gunga lifted his black bony face, and glinted on the moon. "Five
would be good," he said. "Ten would be better. Ohe, do not count, Royal
Traveller. It makes the head ache after ten." And he thought within
himself what a fine thing it was to have kept this Magic-mulgar, this
Prince of Tishnar, for his friend, when he might in his rage have flung
him clean across Obea-munza into that great B[=o][=o]bab-tree grey in
the moon. "He shall teach me the Middens' song, and then I'll fish for
myself," he thought, all his thick skin stirring on his bones with
greed.

So he cozened and cringed and flattered, and used Nod as if he were his
mother's son. He made him lie on his own bed; he put on him a great skin
ear-cap; he filled a bowl with the hot fish-water to bathe his feet; and
he fetched out from a lidded hole in the floor a necklet of scalloped
Bamba-shells, and hung it round his slender neck.

But Nod, as soon as he lay down, began thinking of those poor
Mulla-mulgars, his brothers, h