“Moss generally is on the mountain,” cried Kenneth. “You should sit down on a stone or a tuft of heath if you’re tired. Try that.”
“I’m so uncomfortably wet, thank you,” replied Max, “I don’t think I’ll sit down.”
“Oh, you’ll soon dry up again. Let’s go on, then. We’re nearly up at the top.”
Kenneth’s “nearly up at the top” proved to be another twenty minutes’ arduous climb, to a place where the water came trickling over a perpendicular wall of rock ten feet high, and this had to be scaled, Max being got to the top by Scood hauling and Kenneth giving him a “bump up,” as he called it. Then there was another quarter of an hour’s climb in and out along the steep gully, with the stones rattling down beneath their feet, and then they were out, not on the top, as Max expected, but only to see another pile of cliff away to his right, and again others beyond.
They had reached the top of the range of cliff, however, and away to their left lay the sea, while, as they walked on along the fairly level cliff, Max felt a peculiar shrinking sensation of insecurity, for only a few yards away was the edge, where the face fell down to the shore.
“Don’t walk quite so near,” he said nervously.
“Certainly not,” said Kenneth politely. “Do you hear, Scoody? don’t go so near. It’s dangerous. Come this way.”
As he spoke, he made his way, to Max’s horror, close to the verge, and, with a grin of delight, the young gillie followed him, to climb every now and then on the top of some projecting block right over the brink, and so that had he dropped a stone it would have fallen sheer upon the rocks below.
Max felt a strange catching of the breath, and his eyes dilated and throat grew dry; when, seeing his suffering, Kenneth came more inward.
“Why, what are you afraid of?” he said, laughing. “We’re used to it, and don’t mind it any more than the sheep.”