yelled the Firedrake . `` Just let me get at him ! '' and he scrambled out , all red-hot as he was . `` I 'll go and tell him you 're coming , '' said the prince ; and with two strides he was over the frozen mountain of the Remora . CHAPTER X. The Prince and the Remora . If he had been too warm before , the prince was too cold now . The hill of the Remora was one solid mass of frozen steel , and the cold rushed out of it like the breath of some icy beast , which indeed it was . All around were things like marble statues of men in armour : they were the dead bodies of the knights , horses and all , who had gone out of old to fight the Remora , and who had been frosted up by him . The prince felt his blood stand still , and he grew faint ; but he took heart , for there was no time to waste . Yet he could nowhere see the Remora . `` Hi ! '' shouted the prince . Then , from a narrow chink at the bottom of the smooth , black hill , -- a chink no deeper than that under a door , but a mile wide , -- stole out a hideous head ! It was as flat as the head of a skate-fish , it was deathly pale , and two chill-blue eyes , dead-coloured like stones , looked out of it . Then there came a whisper , like the breath of the bitter east wind on a winter day : `` Where are you , and how can I come to you ? '' `` Here I am ! '' said the prince from the top of the hill . Then the flat , white head set itself against the edge of the chink from which it had peeped , and slowly , like the movement of a sheet of ice , it slipped upwards and curled upwards , and up , and up ! There seemed no end to it at all ; and it moved horribly , without feet , holding on by its own frost to the slippery side of the frozen hill . Now all the lower part of the black hill was covered with the horrid white thing coiled about it in smooth , flat , shiny coils ; and still the head was higher than the rest ; and still the icy cold came nearer and nearer , like Death .
The prince almost fainted : everything seemed to swim ; and in one moment more he would have fallen stiff XXXXX the mountain-top , and the white head would have crawled over him , and the cold coils would have slipped over him and turned him to stone .
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