Something sweeter than honey, something that at one taste wakened in memory Mutta, and Seelem, and the little Portingal's hut, and Glint's towering Ukka-tree, and all his childhood, was pushed between his teeth. Nod sneezed three times, struggled, and sat up.
For a moment the light blinded him. Then at last he saw all among a long low stretch of rushes, in still, green water, between the rafts, a picture of the sky. A crescent moon hung like a shell in the pale green quiet of daybreak. He scrambled to his feet, still gnawing his Ummuz-cane. He saw Thimble mumbling like a hungry dog over his food, and the lean shapes of the Moona-mulgars shuffling to and fro. On one side rose the forests of the northern slopes of Arakkaboa. A warm, sweet wind was moving with daybreak, and only on the heights next the green of the sky shone Tishnar's unchanging snows. Flowers bloomed everywhere around him, not vanishing flowers of magic now. And as far as his round eyes could see, 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 Nōōmad 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," said Nod suddenly.
Thumb's great head turned on his stooping shoulders, and, with mouth ajar, he stared long and closely at what seemed to be a heap of tangled boughs washed up in the water far beneath them.