It is not a story that falls easily and smoothly into sequence. It has been garnered from
many sources and from many people. Some of it comes in the form of fragments from
men who looked upon strange and violent scenes. For the sea has claimed its own and
spreads its rippled blanket over the site, and the great white bird with the black-tipped
pinions that saw it all from the beginning to the end has returned to the dark, frozen
silences of the north-lands whence it came.