It starts with a stone falling, in silence, vertically, motionless. It is falling from a great height, an aerolith, a massive block of rock, compact, elongated, like a kind of giant egg with a lumpy surface.

Just below, on the smooth flat surface of the sea, the successive motionless fringes of foam form a series of horizontal lines running parallel to the straight edge of the long beach. It is hard to say on account of its no doubt considerable altitude whether the stone will end its fall the pale brown sand or whether it will break the sheet of water, where its engulfment, once the showers of spray thrown up by the impact have fallen back, will leave only an indefinite series of concentric circles, again suspended in, for the time being, total fixity.