the
old formula that to think, here, on other things than the moment and
the material was to die or go distraught.

She got up and shifted her position, sitting with her back towards the
boat.

She could see the penguins, now, drilling beneath the cliff and beyond
the penguins the figure-head of the ship and beyond that the fuming beach
with its snow storm of gulls. She was soon to see something that many
would travel a thousand miles to witness, but unconscious of what was
coming she sat watching the penguins, then with the boat hook point she
began scratching figures on the sand, but with difficulty, on account of
the length of the staff.

Sitting like this her eyes were suddenly attracted seaward to a point in
the water beyond the line of the figure-head. Things were moving out
there, moving rapidly and drawing in-shore and now, riding an incoming
wave, like a half submerged canoe, she saw a dark elongated form. It
came shooting through the foam just like a beaching canoe and as it
dragged itself up the sand a sound like the far off roar of a lion came
echoing along the cliffs.

She knew at once what it was, a sea elephant. Prince Selm had described
them and how they came ashore at Kerguelen to breed, journeying there
through thousands of miles of ocean and arriving in hundreds and
thousands at different points of the coast.

This was the first of the great herd and, as she watched, more were
coming, breasting the waves and breaking from the foam and coming up the
beach like vast, rapidly-moving slugs.

The sight held her fascinated. Every newcomer saluted the land with a
roar. They were the males; the females of the herd, still far out at sea
beyond the islands, would not land to give birth to their young for
another fortnight.

She watched till perhaps two hundred had beached, then the invasion
ceased; there was no more roaring, and over the army of invaders,
lumping along hither and thither on the flat rocks, the sea-gulls flew
and screamed in anger or in welcome, who could say?

Prince Selm had spoken of how the sea elephants fought together on
landing. He was wrong. The great, far-distant brutes instead of fighting
seemed resting and sunning themselves and the girl, rising up, came
along in their direction. She had forgotten Bompard and La Touche.

She reached the river which was spating from the recent rains, but great
flat-topped rocks made it always possible to cross; she crossed it.

The sea ele