The brothers looked at the black and thorn-set trees, at the towering rocks, at the wastes of the beautiful snows. They looked with astonishment at this old, half-blind mountaineer with his lean, sinewy arms, and hill-bent legs, and his bandaged eyes. And Thumb lifted his hands in salutation to Ghibba, as if he were a Mulla-mulgar himself.
"Why should we lead you into strange dangers, O Man of the Mountains," he grunted—"maybe to death? But if you ask to come with us, if we have only to choose, how can I and my brothers say no? We will at least be friends who do not part while danger is near, and though we never reach the Valley, Tishnar befriends the Meermuts of the brave. Let us, then, go on together."
So Ghibba went back to his people, and told them what Thumb had said. And being now agreed together, they all hobbled off but three, who were left to guard the bundles, to break and cut down wood, and to see if perhaps among the thorns grew any nut-trees. But they found none; and for their pains were only scratched and stung by these waste-trees which bear a deadly poison in their long-hooked thorns. This poison, like the English nettle, causes a terrible itch to follow wherever the thorns scratch. So that the travellers could get no peace from the stinging and itching except by continually rubbing the parts in snow wherever the thorns had entered.
And Nod, while they were stick-gathering, kept close to Ghibba.
"Tell me, Prince of the Mountains," he said, "what are these nets of Nōōmanossi of which you spoke to my brother Thumb? What is there so much to fear?"
Ghibba had sat himself down in the snow to pluck a thorn out of his foot. "I will tell the Prince a tale," he said, stooping over his bundle.
"Long time ago came to our mountains a Mulgar travelling alone. My kinsmen think oftener of him than any stranger else, because, Mulla-mulgar, he taught us to make fire. He was wayworn and full of courage, but he was very old. And he, too, was journeying to the Valleys of Tishnar. But he was, too, a silent Mulgar, never stirred his tongue unless in a kind of drone at evening, and told us little of himself except in sleep."
"What was he like?" said Nod. "Was he mean and little, like me, or tall and bony, like my brother Thimble, or fat, like the Mulla-mulgar, my eldest brother, Thumb?"
"He was," said Ghibba, "none of these. He was betwixt and between. But he wore a ragged red jacket, like those of the Mulgars, and on his woman-hand stood no fourth finger."
"Was the little woman-finger newly gone, or oldly gone?" said Nod.