“The mountain certainly is built on a larger scale than one would think from below,” pronounced Renshaw, as he surveyed the summit which they were now very near. “We shall have to make a cast round to the left and look for a gully. The horses will never be able to climb over these rocks.”
The said rocks lay strewn thickly around; remnants of a cliff at one time guarding this side of the summit, but which in past ages must have fallen away into fragments. From below they had seemed mere pebbles.
“Right you are,” acquiesced Sellon, “Lead on.”
A détour of a couple of hundred yards and they rounded the spur, which had ended abruptly in a precipice. They were now on the western angle of the mountain. Immediately above rose a lofty wall of rock, the nearer end of the cock’s-comb ridge. It continued in unbroken fall some hundreds of feet from where they stood. They had reached the extremity of the slope, and halting for a moment paused in admiration of the stately grandeur of the great cliff sweeping down into giddy depths.
“Let’s take a look over,” said Maurice, advancing cautiously to the angle formed by the projection whereon they stood, and lying flat to peer over the brink.
“Yes; only be careful,” warned his companion.
As he peered over there was a “flap—flap—flap” echoing from the face of the cliff, like so many pistol-shots, as a cloud of great aasvogels, startled from their roosting places beneath, soared away over the abyss. So near were the gigantic birds that the spectator could see the glitter of their eyes.
“By Jove, but I’d like to go down and have a look at the beggars’ nests,” said Sellon, trying to peer still further over the brink, but in vain, for the aasvogel is among the most suspicious of birds, and, wherever possible, selects his home beneath a jutting projection, and thus out of eyeshot from above.
“They don’t make any, only lay one egg apiece on the bare rock,” said Renshaw, impatiently. “But come on. Man alive, we’ve no time for bird’s-nesting. In half an hour it’ll be dark.”
The sun had gone off the lower world, though here, on high, he still touched with a golden splendour the red burnished face of the giant cliff. And now from their lofty elevation they were able to gaze forth upon a scene of unsurpassable wildness and grandeur. Mountains upon mountains, the embattled walls of a cliff-girdled summit standing in contrast beside a smooth, hog-backed hump; here and there a lofty peak sheering up defiant above its fellows, but everywhere a billowy sea of giant heads towering over the darkling grey of desolate valleys and gloomy rifts now merging into night. But all is utter lifelessness in the complete silence of its desolation—not a sound breaks upon the now fresh and cooling air—not a sight to tell of life and animation—save the ghostly wings of the great vultures floating away into space. Then the sun sinks down behind the further ridge in ruddy sea, leaving the impression that, the whole world is on fire, until the lustrous afterglow fades into the grey shades of gloaming.