they dipped towards the bass, then
his notes burst out so sudden and powerful, it might be supposed four
men's voices had taken up the melody where a boy's had ceased. It
pleased Battle mightily, this night-music--music of all the kinds they
knew, white man's, Jaqqua-music, Nugga-music, and Mulla-mulgars'. Nod,
too, often droned to the sailor, as time went on, the evening song to
Tishnar that his father had taught him, until at last the sailor himself
grew familiar with the sound, and learned the way the notes went. And
sometimes Battle would sit and, singing solemnly, almost as if a little
forlornly, through his nose, would join in too. And sometimes to see
this small monkey perched up with head in air, he could scarce refrain
his laughter, though he always kept a straight face as kindly as with a
child.

But the leopards and other prowling beasts, when they heard the sound of
their strings and music, went mewing and fretting; and many a great
python and ash-scaled poison-snake would rear its head out of its long
sleep and sway with flickering tongue in time to the noisy echoes from
the rocky and firelit shelf above. Even the Jack-Alls and Jaccatrays
squatted whimpering in their bands to listen, and would break when all
was silent into such a doleful and dismal chorus that it seemed to shake
the stars.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

It was many a day after Nod had been taken in the sailor's snare, and
one very snowy, when the little Mulgar, looking up over his cooking, saw
Battle come limping white and blood-beslobbered across the frozen stream
towards home. He carried nothing except his gun, neither beast nor bird.
He stumbled over the ice, and walked crazily. And when he reached the
fire, he just tumbled his musket against a log and sat himself down
heavily, holding his head in his hands, with a sighing groan. Now, this
was the fifth day or more that Battle had gone out and returned without
meat, and Nod, in his vanity, thought the sailor was beginning to weary
of flesh, and to take pleasure only in nuts and fruit, as the
Mulla-mulgars do. But when Battle had dried up the deep scratch on his
neck, and eaten a morsel or two of Nod's fresh-baked Nano-cake, he told
him of his doings.

Nod could even now, of course, only understand a little here and there
of what Battle said. But he twisted out enough words to learn that the
sailor was astonished and perplexed at finding such a scarcity of game,
howsoever fa