The only sound he heard was the falling of
frosted clots of snow from the branches of the trees and the sad,
continuous "Oo-ee, oo-ee, oo-ee!" of the little rust-coloured Bittock
amid the sunlit snow. He did not dare now to rest, though his feet grew
more painful at every step, and his poisoned shoulder itched and ached.

He stumbled on, scarcely heeding where his footsteps were leading him.
Mulgar flies, speckled and humped, roused by the cloudless sun, buzzed
round his eyes and bit and stung him. And suddenly his heart stood still
at sight of seven amber and spotted beasts standing amid the grasses,
casting a league-long shadow with their necks--such beasts as he had
never seen before. But they were busy feeding, their heads and tiny
horns and lustrous eyes half hidden in the foliage of the branches. Nod
stared in fear and wonder, and passed their arbour very softly by.

Night began to fall, and the long-beaked bats to flit in their leathery
hoods, seeking small birds and beasts to quench their thirst. It seemed
now to Nod, his brave heart fallen, that he was utterly forsaken.
Darkness had always sent him scuttling home to the Portingal's hut when
he was little. How often his mother had told him that N[=o][=o]manossi
with his luring harp-strings roamed these farther forests, and strange
beasts, too, that never show their faces to the sun! Worse still, as he
lifted his poor wrinkled forehead to the tree-tops to catch the last
beams of day, he felt a dreadful presence around him. Leopard it was
not, nor Gunga, nor Minimul. He stood still, his left hand resting on
its knuckles in the snow, his right clutching his cudgel, and leaning
his round ear sidelong, he listened and listened. He put down his
cudgel, and stood upright, his hands clasped behind his neck, and
lifting his flat nose, sniffed and sniffed again the scarcely-stirring
air. There was a smell, faint and strange. He turned as if to rush away,
to hide himself--anywhere away from this brooding, terrifying smell,
when, as if it were a little voice speaking beneath his ribs, he heard
the words: "Fear not, Ummanodda; press on, press on!" He took up his
cudgel with a groan, and limped quickly forward, and in an instant
before he could start back, before even he could cry out, he heard a
click, his foot slipped, out of the leaves whipped something smooth and
shining, and he was jerked into the air, caught, bound fast in a snare.

He writhed and kicked, he spat and h