Her voice grew hollow. With a hesitating hand, which seemed afraid of the half–completed gesture, she pointed to some reefs which stood up in powerful masses of different shapes, crouching animals, crenellated keeps, colossal needles, sphynx–heads, jagged pyramids, all in black granite stained with red, as though soaked in blood.
And she whispered:
"Oh, as to those, they have been guarding the island for centuries and centuries, but like wild beasts that only care for doing harm and killing. They . . . they . . . no, it's better never to speak about them or even think of them. They are the thirty wild beasts. Yes, thirty, Madame Véronique, there are thirty of them . . . ."
She made the sign of the cross and continued, more calmly:
"There are thirty of them. Your father says that Sarek
