ools:
but now if ye come back, who knows but that I may fear no longer, but
use my life, and grow to be a mighty man. Come now, let us dight our
supper, and kindle as big a fire as we lightly may; since there is many
a prowling beast about, as bear and lynx and lion; for they haunt this
edge of the rock-sea whereto the harts and the wild bulls and the goats
resort for the sweet grass, and the water that floweth forth from the
lava."

So they cut good store of firing, whereas there was a plenty of bushes
growing in the clefts of the rocks, and they made a big fire and
tethered their horses anigh it when they lay down to rest; and in the
night they heard the roaring of wild things round about them, and more
than once or twice, awakening before day, they saw the shape of some
terrible creature by the light of the moon mingled with the glare of
the earth-fires, but none of these meddled with them, and naught befell
them save the coming of the new day.

CHAPTER 10

They Come to the Gate of the Mountains

That day they herded their horses thereabout, and from time to time the
Sage tried those two if they were perfect in the lore of the road; and
he found that they had missed nothing.

They lay down in the self-same place again that night, and arose
betimes on the morrow and went their ways over the plain as the Sage
led, till it was as if the mountains and their terror hung over their
very heads, and the hugeness and blackness of them were worse than a
wall of fire had been. It was still a long way to them, so that it was
not till noon of the third day from the rock-sea that they came to the
very feet of that fire-scorched ness, and wonderful indeed it seemed to
them that anything save the eagles could have aught to tell of what lay
beyond it.

There were no foothills or downs betwixt the plain and the mountains,
naught save a tumble of rocks that had fallen from the cliffs, piled up
strangely, and making a maze through which the Sage led them surely;
and at last they were clear even of this, and were underneath the flank
of that ness, which was so huge that there seemed that there could
scarce be any more mountain than that. Little of its huge height could
they see, now they were close to it, for it went up sheer at first and
then beetled over them till they could see no more of its side; as they
wound about its flank, and they were long about it, the Sage cried out
to those two and stretched out his hand, a