One of the priests clasped her robe to draw her back, but she turned on
him with the spear, whereon he shrank back into his litter like a snail
into his shell and left her alone. So following the steep path they
marched on, and after them came the two litters with the priests, carried
by all the bearers who could still stand, for these old men weighed no
more than children. From far below them rose a mighty sound as of an angry
sea.
"What is that noise?" called Rachel into the ear of Noie, for the gale was
rising again.
"The sound of wind in the forest where the Tree-folk dwell," she answered.
Then the dawn broke, an awful, blood-red dawn, and by degrees they saw.
Beneath them ran a shallow river, and beyond it, stretching for league
upon league farther than the eye could see, lay the mighty forest whereof
the trees soared two hundred feet or more into the air; the dark
illimitable forest that rolled as the sea rolls beneath the pressure of
the gale, and indeed, seen from above, looked like a green and tossing
ocean. At the sight of the water Rachel and Noie began to run towards it
hand in hand, for they were parched with thirst whose mouths were full of
the salt dust of the desert. The bearers of the litters in which were the
three priests ran also, paying no heed to the cries of the dwarfs within.
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