phants were close to her now and seemed not in the least
disturbed by her presence, they lay here and there, vast brutes, twenty
feet in height, weighing tons, raising themselves occasionally on their
flippers and then sinking back to rest with a sigh of contentment.

She measured them with her eye, noted the short trunks that seemed so
useless, the tusks, the old scar marks got in battle and the splendour
of their strength and mass and muscle. Like the land elephants there was
something about them terrible yet benign.

She drew closer. As regarded animals of any good sort she had the
fearlessness of a child, the instinct that would have been terrified by
a reptile or anything truly ferocious however masked by fur or feather.
These things she felt to be absolutely harmless, as regarded herself,
and they were a million years closer to her than the penguins.

The penguins had amused her, but for all their quaintness and politeness
they seemed as far apart from her as mechanical toys. Her heart had not
gone out to them with that love of living things which lies in the heart
of children, of women and most men.

She drew closer still. The great brutes were now watching her
steadfastly, but seemingly without fear. She had left the boat hook
behind a mile away, dropping it because of its weight, and with the
exception of the knife in her belt she was unarmed. Perhaps they knew
this. Vague in their brains must have lain memories of great hurts when
they were the hunted and men the hunters; but this vision evidently
stored up no antagonistic feelings. Possibly they knew her sex and
possibly the instinct which never failed them told them that she was
friendly.

Less than ten yards away from the nearest bull she sat down on a piece
of rock, and no sooner had she taken her seat than they seemed
immensely closer and her own position one of absolute helplessness. With
a sudden rush, moving with that swiftness with which she had seen them
moving on first landing, the bull could have reached her, but the bull
did not move, his lordship from the sea, filled with the absolute and
complete contentment of the male at rest, moved only his trunk, he
seemed sniffing her and the momentary fear that had seized her passed
utterly away.

She could sniff him too. Just as cows fill the air with the fragrance of
milk the herd filled the place with the scent of fish and fur and a tang
of deep sea like the smell of beach, only sharper and freshe