Nobody Goes Down to Them
There is a beach on the coast where they come out of the sea and lie down, and a wooden walk along the top of the bluff so people can look at them without going down.
The fog was in when I got there. The first thing was the noise. You hear them a long time before the fog lets you see them, a deep sound like something being dragged, and then a knocking, and then nothing for a while.
When it thinned there were more than I could count, lying close together in a long row at the edge of the water. They are very big. They lie still almost the whole time. Every so often one of them flicks sand onto its back with a flipper, and the sand runs off again, and it does it again.
Two of the large ones lifted the front of themselves up and pressed their chests together and shouted, and then both of them lay down. Nothing was decided that I could see. The others did not move for it.
One went into the sea and came out again a little further along. It took a long time, going and coming. It did not seem to be for anything.
A woman on the walk told me that nobody goes down to them. She said it as if I had been about to. I had not.
I stayed on the walk two hours and twenty minutes. By the end the fog had come back in over the far end of the beach, and the near end was the only end there was, and they went on lying in it.