ching the mothers and their babies, and the great
old bulls shuffling about like heavy fathers, sometimes she would smile
and sometimes, sitting and watching, her mind would wander away lost and
trying to grapple with the great mystery of which all this was only a
part.

They were so human, so warm to the heart, and yet only a few days ago
there was nothing here but the rocks and the cold and trackless sea.
Then she noticed that to-day the bulls were not sunning themselves
lazily, although the sun was out. They seemed disturbed, moving about
aimlessly, lifting themselves on their flippers and now and then raising
their short trunks.

Sometimes a female would make as if to get back to the sea but she was
always headed off by a bull.

When dusk fell it seemed that the sentries were doubled, to judge by the
noise of the flopping and moving about. The girl came to the cave
entrance and looked, and lo and behold! every bull had cleared down
towards the sea edge. She could see them stretching away into the dim
distance, a hedge of vast forms broken and moving here and there, but
always restored.

She thought that this line of defence was to keep the females back from
the water, yet there seemed more than mere precaution at the bottom of
the general disturbance that filled the beach. Then as she lay awake she
could hear now and then a distant roar and once a big bull only a few
hundred yards from the cave took it into his head to give tongue with a
blast like the first deep "woof" of a siren, then came another sound
quite close to the cave entrance, a sound like the broken lapping of
ripples, interrupted by movements and little snorts and sighs. It was a
baby seal sucking away at the teats of its mother. The pair was just
outside the cave.

CHAPTER XX

VAE VICTIS

A Howling wind that rose at midnight carrying niagaras of rain oversea
from the mountains sank at dawn leaving a clear sky and a falling sea.

As she came out into the early morning light she could see boosts of
spray all along the rocks, but by the time she had tidied things up and
finished her breakfast these had vanished and the water was coming in,
rolling lazily, and the sounds of the breakers came sleepy and evenly
spaced as though ruled by a metronome.

The bulls no longer lined the shore, though keeping close to the water
they had broken up into groups, yet still the sense of disturbance was
there pervading the beach like an atmosphere.