oosa,
Immamoosa!" he grunted.

Almond and evening-blooming Immamoosa it was, indeed, which they could
smell, shedding its fragrance abroad at nightfall. And in a little while
out at last into the starry darkness they came, the great forest-trees
standing black and still around them, their huge boughs cloaked with
snow.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII

It was bitterly cold, and as the three travellers stood there, ragged
and sore and hungry, they thought they would never weary of gazing at
the starry sky and sniffing the keen night air between the trees. But
which way should they go? No path ran here, for the Earth-mulgars never
let any path grow clear around their mounds. Thumb climbed a little way
up a Gelica-tree that stood over them, and soon espied low down in the
sky the Bear's bright Seven, which circle about the dim Pole Star. So he
quickly slid down again to tell his brothers. It so happened, however,
that in this tree grows a small, round, gingerish nut that takes two
whole years to ripen, and hangs in thick clusters amid the branches.
They have a taste like cinnamon, and with these the Earth-mulgars
flavour their meat. And as Thumb slid heavily down, being stiff and sore
now, and very heavy, he shook one of these same clusters, and down it
came rattling about Nod's head. They have but thin shells, these nuts,
and are not heavy, but they tumbled so suddenly, and from such a height,
that Nod fell flat, his hands thrown out along the snow. He clambered
up, rubbing his head, and in the quietness, while they listened, they
heard as it were a distant and continuous throbbing beneath them.

Thimble crouched down, with head askew. "The Minimuls, the Z[=o][=o]ts!"
he grunted.

But even at the same moment Nod had cried out too. "Thumb, Thumb, O
Mulla-mulgar, the Wonderstone! the Wonderstone! the snow, the snow!" No
pale and tapering light hovered clearly beaming now beneath these cold
and starlit branches. The Mounds of the Minimuls were awake and astir.
Soon the furious little Flesh-eaters would come pouring up in their
hundreds, and to-morrow, their magic gone, all three brothers would be
quickly frizzling, with these same Gelica-nuts for seasoning, on the
spit.

Nod flung himself down; down, too, went Thumb and Thimble in the
ice-bespangled snow. At last they found the stone, shining like a pale
moon amid the twinkling starriness of the frost. But it was only just in
time. Even now th