They cried, "Seelem!" "Seelem, Seelem!" replied the mocking voices.
"Ummani nâta? Still we go on?" shouted Thumb hoarsely.
"Nâta, nâta! On, on, on!" sang echo hoarselier yet.
Wind had swept clean the glassy floor. In its black lustre gleamed the increasing moon. And after dark had fallen, mists arose and trailed in moonlit beauty across the granite escarpments of the hills. So that night the travellers lay in a vast tent of lovely solitude, with only the strange noises of the ice and the whisperings of the frost to tell poor wakeful Nod he was anything more than a little Mulgar in a dream.
Next morning early they met one of those crack-brained Môh-mulgars that wander, eat, sleep, live, and die alone, having broken away from all traffic and company with their friends and kinsmen. He wore about his neck a double-coiled necklet of little bones, and wound round his middle a plait of Cullum. He was dirty, bowed, and matted, and his eyes were glazed as he lifted them into the sunlight in answer to Thumb's shout:
"Tell us, O Môh-mulgar, we beseech you, how shall three travellers to the kingdom of Assasimmon find a pathway across these hills?"
The Môh-mulgar lifted both gnarled hands above his head.
"Geguslar nōōma gulmeta mūh!" replied a thick, half-brutal voice.
"What does he say?" said Nod, wondering to see him wave his spotted arms as he wagged his crazy head.
"Well," says Thumb, "what he says is this: 'Death's at the end of all paths.'"