"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. Ohé, 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 Bōōbab-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, hungry and shivering in the tree-tops. And he pondered how he could help them. Presently he began to chafe and toss in his bed, to sigh and groan.
Up started the old Gunga from his corner beside the fire. "What ails the Prince? Why does he groan? Are you in pain, Mulla-mulgar?"