“I just want to see where it goes,” argued Phil.
“Well, you may crawl up to the edge of the precipice and look over,” exclaimed Frank. “But you’re not going down there.”
And yet a few minutes later they discovered that, at some time, on that perilously narrow ledge from which a fall might mean a drop of a thousand feet or more, a human being had made his way to the top of the mountain.
The boys and the Englishman now took time for a more careful survey of the summit. It was mainly circular and, they estimated, as much as an eighth of a mile in its longest diameter. Of this surface, over half was covered by a chaos of broken rock on the western and northern sides.
“This must have been a pointed peak at one time,” suggested Lord Pelton, “which some volcanic action has broken off. I’ve seen similar formations in the lower Alps.”
Not far from the wall-like rock heaps and about the center of the more level surface was a second line of fragments. A more careful view of it showed that the north end of this fencelike heap was practically joined to the ruggeder heaps beyond it. Out of the rocks Nature had fashioned a sort of pen or enclosed space from which the frightened sheep, they now saw, had emerged and into which some of them were now disappearing.
“Come on,” exclaimed Phil, “let’s follow ’em. If we can’t get a few big ones now we deserve to lose ’em.”
Frank was inclined to stay at the cut to head off possible fugitives, but finally he succumbed to the arguments of his friends.
“Mr. Mackworth wouldn’t do it,” urged Phil.