"Softly, softly, child!" said Thumb. "It is only your giddy eyes rolling. What's more," he said, pretending to laugh, "those old hairy Men of the Mountains, even if only Meermuts, must have come from somewhere. Where they came from we can go to. O and Ahôh!" he called.
"Why do you call 'Ahôh!' Thumb?" whispered Nod, with tight-shut eyes.
"Both together, Thimbulla," muttered Thumb. "Ahôh, ahôh, ahôh!" they bawled.
Their voices sounded small and far-away. Only a bird screamed in answer from the chasm beneath. The sun blazed shadowlessly over the peak of Kush upon the three Mulgars, standing motionless, pressed close against the steaming rock. To Nod the minutes crawled like hours, while he crouched sick and trembling, clutching Thumb's rags to keep him from falling.
"Thimble, my brother," at last called Thumb softly, "could you, if little Nod twisted himself round, straddle your legs enough to let him creep through? We old gluttonous fellows were never meant for mountain-climbing. And standing here over the great misty pot——" But just then it seemed to Thumb he felt, light as the wind, something softly pluck at his wool hat. Very, very slowly, and without a word, he lifted his head and looked up—looked straight up into the sorrowful hairy face of a Man of the Mountains dangling, the last of a long chain, from a rocky parapet above.
"Why?" says Thumb, looking into his face. "What then?"
"Up, up!" said he, in a thin, lisping Munza-tongue, making a step or loop of his long fringed arms.
This, then, was the stairs or ladder on which the travellers must climb into safety. But Thumb could barely touch him with the tips of his fingers. He stood in doubt, staring up. And presently down that living rope of Mulgars yet another Man of the Mountains softly descended, and his arms just reached Thumb's elbows.
"Tread gently, Mulla-mulgar," said this last, with a doleful smile. "You are fat, and our ladder is slender."
Thumb, with one white, doglike glance into the deeps, took firm hold, and slowly, heavily, he climbed on from trembling Mulgar to trembling Mulgar till at length he reached the top.