Come now, let us
dight our supper, and kindle as big a fire as we lightly may;
since there is many a prowling beast about, as bear and lynx and lion;
for they haunt this edge of the rock-sea whereto the harts
and the wild bulls and the goats resort for the sweet grass,
and the water that floweth forth from the lava."
So they cut good store of firing, whereas there was a plenty
of bushes growing in the clefts of the rocks, and they made a big
fire and tethered their horses anigh it when they lay down to rest;
and in the night they heard the roaring of wild things round about them,
and more than once or twice, awakening before day, they saw the shape
of some terrible creature by the light of the moon mingled with
the glare of the earth-fires, but none of these meddled with them,
and naught befell them save the coming of the new day.
CHAPTER 10
They Come to the Gate of the Mountains
That day they herded their horses thereabout, and from time to time
the Sage tried those two if they were perfect in the lore of the road;
and he found that they had missed nothing.
They lay down in the self-same place again that night, and arose betimes
on the morrow and went their ways over the plain as the Sage led, till it
was as if the mountains and their terror hung over their very heads, and the
hugeness and blackness of them were worse than a wall of fire had been.
It was still a long way to them, so that it was not till noon of the third day
from the rock-sea that they came to the very feet of that fire-scorched ness,
and wonderful indeed it seemed to them that anything save the eagles could
have aught to tell of what lay beyond it.
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