“The Secret Forest! How big it is! How thick and dark! How high we are above it!”
All eight of them stared down into the valley that lay hidden and lost between the big ring of mountains. Only Beowald could not see the miles upon miles of dark green forest below, but his eyes seemed to rest on the valley below, just as the others’ did.
“Isn’t it mysterious?” said Jack. “It seems so still and quiet here. Even the wind makes no sound. I wish I could see that spire of smoke I thought I saw when we flew down low over the forest in the aeroplane.”
But there was no smoke to be seen, and no sound to he heard. The forest might have been dead for a thousand years, it was so still and lifeless.
“It’s funny to stand here and look at the Secret Forest, and know you can’t ever get to it,” said Mike. He looked down from the ledge he was standing on. There was a sheer drop down to the valley below, or so it seemed to the boy. It was quite plain that not even a goat could leap down.
“Now you can see why it is impossible to cross these mountains,” said Ranni. “There is no way down the other side at all. All of them are steep and dangerous like this one. No man would dare to try his luck down that precipice, not even with ropes!”
The girls did not like looking down such a strange, steep precipice. They had climbed mountains in Africa but none had been so steep as this one.
“I want to go back now,” said Nora. “I’m feeling quite giddy.”
“It is time we all went,” said Ranni, looking at his watch. “We must hurry too, or we shall be very late.”
“I can take you another way back,” said Beowald. “It will be shorter for you to go to the castle. Follow me.”