ver come an end to their labour, and
many a strange face stared down on them from the brooding galleries of
the forest.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIII

At last, after fixing a lighted torch between the logs of each raft, the
Mulgars began to get aboard. On the first Ghibba and Thimble embarked,
squatting the one in front and the other astern, to keep their craft
steady. With big torches smoking in the sunshine, they pushed off.
Tugging on a long strand of Samarak which they had looped around the
smooth branch of a Boobab, they warped themselves free. Soon well
adrift, with water singing in their green twigs, they slid swiftly into
the stream, shoving and pulling at their long poles, beating the green
water to foam, as they neared the fork, to keep their dancing catamaran
from drifting into the surge that would have toppled them over the
cataract. The rest of the travellers stood stock-still by the
water-side, gazing beneath their hands after the green ship and its two
sailors, dark and light, brandishing their poles. They followed along
the bank as far as they could, standing lean in the evening beams,
wheezing shrilly, "Illaloothi, Illaloothi!" as Moona and Mulla-mulgar
floated into the mouth of the cavern and vanished from sight.

One after another the rest swept off, their rafts dancing light as corks
on the emerald water, each with its flaming torch fast fixed, and its
two struggling Mulgars tugging at their long water-poles. And as each
raft drifted beneath the lowering arch of the cavern, the Mulgars aboard
her raised aloft their poles for farewell to Mulgarmeerez. Last of all
Thumb loosed his mooring-rope, and with the baggage-raft in tow cast off
with Nod into the stream. Pale sunshine lay on the evening frost and
gloom of the forests, and far in the distance wheeled Kippel, capped
with snow, as the raft rocked round the curve and floated nearer and
nearer to the cavern. Nod squatted low at the stern, his pole now idly
drifting, while behind him bobbed the baggage-raft, tethered by its rope
of Cullum. He stared into the flowing water, and it seemed out of its
deeps, faintly echoing, rang the voice of the sorrowful Water-midden,
bidding him farewell. And when Thumb's back was for a moment turned, he
tore out of the tousled wool of his jacket another of his ivory buttons,
and, lying flat in the leafy twigs, dropped it softly into the stream.
"There, little brother," he whispered to the button, "tell th