The tide was just turning back from the flood, and as she stood watching
she noticed the curious fact that not a single bull was taking to the
water; ordinarily, here and there along the rocks, there was always some
monster taking a header, some vast bulk beaching in a potter of foam.
This morning there was nothing of this sort.

Picking her way between the mothers and their babies she came down to
the sea edge, choosing a broad space left vacant because of the bad
landing conditions. The rocks here were higher, forming a miniature
cliff some four or five feet in height and from this point looking
seaward something caught her eye.

Three black objects moving in a line were making a long ripple on the
swell. They were the heads of three sea elephants moving like one. Then
the line became the segment of a circle bending in shore. But the
swimmers were not going to land; they kept parallel to the rocks and a
few hundred yards out, and as they passed she could see clearly the
great heads and sometimes the massive shoulders rising and washing away
the water and the eyes, as the heads swung now and then shorewards,
wicked eyes that seemed to blaze with the light of anger or battle.

She was not alone in observing them. They had been spotted by a
trumpet-voiced sentry and instantly the whole place was in commotion.
The air split with a roar that passed along from section to section of
the beach whilst the cliffs resounded and a thousand sea-gulls rose as
if from nowhere, crying, cat-calling and making a snowstorm in the
sunlight.

On the roar and as if destroyed by it the three heads vanished.

Then, far out, they reappeared, only to dive again, leaving the sea
blank, but for a school of porpoises passing along on their quiet
business a mile away towards the east.

The girl sat watching. There was something in all this of greater import
than the appearance of three swimming sea elephants. The beach told her
that. Not a bull in all that vast herd but was in motion, either helping
to crowd the females back towards the cliffs or patrolling the rocks.
She could see them here and there rising up on their hind-quarters as
though to get a better view of the sea. They reminded her of dogs
begging for biscuits. Then, turning her eyes seaward again she saw a
black spot; it was a moving head. Then another broke the surface and
another, till in a moment, and for a mile-long stretch, hundreds of
heads appeared, all driving shoreward