A dim path leading out of the woods from the east ran among a cluster of boulders and wound up the crag on a ladder of stony shelves to a flat ledge near the summit.

The rusty tethering collar proved useful as her final handhold before Maia was able at last to flounder one leg, then another, over a rounded lip and onto a stony shelf.

The wolf eel makes its home on rocky reefs or stony bottom shelves from shallow to moderate depths, picking a territory in a crevice, den or lair in the rocks.

There the river was broad and shallow, passing in two arms about a large eyot, over a stony shelf covered with stones and pebbles brought down from the north.

That night they camped on a stony shelf with a rock-wall behind them, in which there was a shallow cave, a mere scoop in the cliff.