The firelight glanced on the earthy roof far above him. Here and there the contorted root of some enormous forest-tree jutted out into the air. There was a continued faint rustle around him, as of bees in a hive or ants in a pine-wood. This was the shuffling of the Minimuls' shoes, which are flat, like sandals, and made of silver grass plaited together, that rustles on the sandy floor of their chambers and galleries. This plaited grass they tie, too, round their middles for a belt or pouch, beneath which, as they walk, their long lean tails descend. Their fur shines faintly shot in moon or firelight, and is either pebble-grey or sand-coloured. It never bristles into hair except about their polls and chops, where it stands in a smooth, even wall, about one and a half to two inches high, leaving the remnant of their faces light and bare. They stand for the most part about three spans high in their grass slippers. Their noses are even flatter than the noses of the Mullabruks. Their teeth stand out somewhat, giving their small faces a cunning mouse-look, which never changes. Their eyes are round and thin-lidded, and almost as colourless as glass. Yet behind their glassiness seems to be set a gleam, like a far and tiny taper shining, so that they are perfectly visible in the dark, or even dusk. Thus may they be seen, a horde of them together in the evening gloom of the forest when they go Mulgar-hunting. When they are closely looked on, they can, as it were within their eyes, shut out this gleam--it vanishes; but still they continue to see, though dimly. By day their eyes are as empty as pure glass marbles. Their smell is faintly rank, through eating so much flesh. The she and young Minimuls feed in the deeper chambers of their mounds, and never venture out.
Nod was falling into a nap from weariness and pain, when there came spindling along an old sallow-hued Earth-mulgar, whose eyes were pink, rather than glass-grey, like the others. He shook his head this way, that way, muttering his magic over Nod; then, with a mottled gourd beside him, he very gently and dexterously rolled back the strip or bandage of leaves on Nod's shoulder, and peered close into his poisoned wound. He probed it softly with his hairless fingers. Then out of the pouch hanging on his stomach he took fresh leaves, smeared and stalked, a little clay pot of green healing-grease, and anointed the sore. This he rubbed ever so smoothly with his two middle fingers. After which he bound all up again so skilfully with leaves and grass that it seemed to Nod his wounded shoulder was the easiest and most comfortable part of his body. Out of his pinkish eyes he gazed greedily into Nod's face for a moment, and took his departure.