"Why lurks the little Mulgar in the Oomgar's hut?" yelped a lank hoary Jaccatray.
"I guard her treasures for the Nameless," said Nod; but he had hardly said the word when he heard Battle striding to the door.
"It's no good prattling and blabbing, my son," he was saying. "If come it be, it's come. Off, now, while your skin's whole, and let me give the rogues a taste of powder."
Two or three of the hunting-dogs yelped aloud. "What, my brothers!" said Nod. "Did you hear the Oomgar's Meermut calling for his gun?"
A few of the meaner dogs scampered off a few paces at this, sniffing and cocking their ears.
"Out of the way, Pongo," whispered the Englishman through the doorway, and the next moment there fell a crash that nearly toppled Nod into the snow, and Battle strode out of the hut with his smoking musket. But the cowardly Jack-Alls, at sound of his gun and at sight of the ghost of the Oomgar they had torn to pieces, lifted up their voices in a howl of terror, and in an instant over the snow they swept off at a gallop, and soon were lost in the moonless silence and shadowiness of Munza.
Nod turned towards the hut. Battle stood in his breeches, his gun in his hand, his blue eyes wide open as if in fear.
