ir
march and three bulls fronting them. The penguins wished to pass, either
from impudence or a real desire to cross the beach, but the bulls barred
the way, heading them off, turning and twisting, snorting as if to blow
the feathered ones away.

The penguins bowed and scraped and explained, but the bulls, blind to
politeness and deaf to argument only presented their heads, then they
raised their rumps and made a half charge. The girl watched the penguins
going at the double with heads slewed round as though fearful of their
tails. Then she laughed.

The sea elephants had not only made her able to laugh, they had given
her something to laugh over. Then came the thought: why had they refused
the penguins and accepted her?

She did not know that the penguins were rival fishermen, she fancied
that the sea elephants were somehow friendly to her, divining her
friendship for them, and maybe she was right, though not perhaps in the
way she fancied, for when God made friendship He made it out of queer
and sometimes negative materials.

That night as she lay in her cave with a rolled-up blanket for pillow
and the other blanket for covering, neither Ghosts nor Loneliness came
to trouble her.

Two great bulls a few yards from the cave's mouth kept her warm and
comfortable of mind.

She could hear their puffs and grunts and the occasional wobble-wobble
of their digestive organs as they slept, dreaming maybe in their sleep,
for sometimes they tossed and moved, and once one of them gave a "woof"
as though trying to roar under the blanket of sleep.

She thought of dogs lying asleep; dogs dreamed and hunted in their
dreams, why should not these?

Then suddenly the rain came down as though someone had pulled the
string of a shower bath, but she knew that would not drive them away,
guessing that rain to sea elephants was no more disturbing than sun to
peaches.

Then she was chasing penguins along the beach, riding on a sea elephant
towards that absolute oblivion which is the brand of sleep they serve at
Kerguelen.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BIRDS

It rained off and on for three days, but rain in Kerguelen is not the
same as rain in England, just as rain at Windmere is not the same as
rain at Birmingham. It does not depress, especially when you are busy.
In those three days she made three journeys to the break in the cliffs
to recover the things she had left there and she made her journeys, not
to put too fine a point on