The sun had set, but the moon was at full, and the travellers determined to go forward at once. It was agreed that every one should carry a bundle of sticks on his shoulders, also a stout cudgel or staff; that they should march close in rows of four, with Thimble's litter in their midst; and that the Mulgar at each corner should carry a burning torch. They made what haste they could to tie up their bundles, bottles, and faggots, so as to lose nothing of the moon's brilliance during the long night. She rode unclouded above the snow-fields when the little band of Mulgar-travellers set out. As soon as they were gone, down trooped the long-nosed Obobbomans to the fire, sniffing and scuffling, to fall asleep at last, higgledy-piggledy, in a great squirrel-coloured ring around the glowing embers, their noses towards the fire.
The travellers marched slowly, keeping sharp watch, their cudgels ready in their hands. Behind them, paled by the moonlight, shook the fiery silver of the Salemn[=a]gar. With this at their backs and that North Pole, M[=o][=o]t, in huge congealment, a little to their left, they made their way at an angle across the open snow, and approached the tangled thickets. Here they walked more closely together, with heads aslant and tails in air, like little old men, like pedlars, blinking and spying, wishing beyond measure they were sitting in comfort around their watch-fire. The farther they zigzagged betwixt the thorns, the more doubtful grew the way. For the thorn-trees rise all so equal in height and thickness they often with their tops shut out the stars, and there was nothing by which the travellers could mark what way they went.
Still they pressed on, their hairy faces to the night-wind, which Ghibba had observed before starting was drifting from the north. They shuffled crisply over the snow, coughing softly, and gurring in their throats, winding in and out between the trees, and casting lean, gigantic shadows across the open spaces. For so dazzling bright the moon gleamed, she almost put out the smoky flare of their torches. But it gave the Mulgars more courage to march encompassed with their own light. Their packs were heavy, the thickets sloped continually upward. But the poison-thorns curl backward beneath the drooping hood of their leaves by night--in the hours, that is, when, it is said, they distil their poison--so the travellers were no longer fretted by their stings. Thus, then, they gradually advanced till M[=o][=o]t was left behind them, and out of the grey night rose Mulgarmeerez, mightiest of Arakkaboa's peaks, whose snows have known no Mulgar footprints since the world began.