en he saw here and there shadowy figures
stooping out. And now and then in the hush he heard a flappity rustle,
as of some hairy creature scampering quickly along the ledge on four
naked feet. But he called and called in vain. No answer followed, except
a feeble hail from Thimble's raft far ahead, with its torches feebly
twinkling.

Only three of the nine rafts now showed lights, and the last of these
had drifted in, and become entangled in some jutting rock or in the
long, leathery weed that hung like lichen-coloured grass along the sides
of the cavern. As Nod drew slowly near, he saw that on this raft both
its Mulgars lay flat on their faces, lost in their second sleep from
drinking of the water. He pushed hard at his long pole, and, leaning
over, caught their strand of trailing Samarak, and hauled the raft
safely into mid-stream again. He stirred and pommelled the Mulgars with
his pole. But they made no sign of feeling, except that their mouths
fell a little ajar. Then he lit the last but one of his own torches by
the failing flame of theirs. But it hovered sullen and blue. The air was
thick. Each breath he took was heavy as a sigh. He was shrunk very
meagre with travel, and his little breathing bosom was nothing but a
slender cage of bones above his heart. He crouched down in the
whispering solitude. His lips were cracked, his tongue like tinder. He
mumbled his shells in vain between his teeth. But from first sleep to
the second sleep is but a little journey, and thence to the last the way
runs all downhill.

He chafed his eyes, he clenched his teeth, he crooned wheezily all the
songs Battle had taught him. And now once more the cavern opened into a
wide and still lagoon, over whose grey floor phantom lights moved
cloudily before the advancing rafts. Its roof wanly blazed with
crystals. And there was no doubt now of Mulgar inhabitants. They sat
unmoved upon their rocky ledges and parapets, with puffed-out, furry
bodies and immense round, lustrous eyes, with which they steadily
surveyed the worn and matted Mulgars, some stretched in stupid slumber,
some fevered and famished, with burning eyes, drifting slowly past their
glistening grottoes. But none so much as stirred a finger or paid any
heed to the Mulgars' entreaties for food. Only their long ears, which
peaked well out of their wool, twitched and nodded, as if their
ducketings were a kind of secret language between them.

Nod's raft swam last across this weed-