:23:01
"What a pretentious young crackpot."
Which Sebastian was not.
:23:06
This is something
I've never told anyone before.
:23:09
Something so terrible.
:23:11
Forgive me if I sound quite mad,
but it's true all the same.
:23:15
Sebastian saw the face of God.
:23:19
I'd like to hear about that.
:23:21
Yes, yes.
:23:24
One long ago summer,
sitting right here in this garden...
:23:29
...Sebastian said,
"Mother, listen to this."
:23:32
And he read me
Herman Melville's description...
:23:35
...of the Encantadas,
the Galapagos Islands.
:23:39
He read me that description
and said we had to go there.
:23:43
So we did go there that summer...
:23:45
...on a boat,
a four-masted schooner...
:23:48
...the sort of boat that Melville
would have sailed on.
:23:52
We saw the Encantadas.
:23:54
But on the Encantadas
we saw something...
:23:57
...that he hadn't written about.
:23:59
We saw the sea turtles
crawl out of the sea...
:24:02
...for their annual egg-laying.
:24:04
Once a year, the female
of the sea turtles...
:24:08
...crawls out of the sea
onto the blazing sand beach...
:24:11
...of a volcanic island
to dig a pit in the sand...
:24:15
...and deposit her eggs there.
:24:18
It's a long and dreadful thing,
the depositing of the eggs in the sand.
:24:22
And when it's finished...
:24:24
...the exhausted female turtle
crawls back to the sea half-dead.
:24:30
She never sees her offspring.
:24:33
But we did.
:24:34
Sebastian knew exactly when
the sea turtle eggs would be hatched.
:24:39
- We returned in time for it.
- You went back?
:24:42
In time to witness the hatching
and their desperate flight to the sea.
:24:47
The narrow beach, the colour
of caviar, was all in motion.
:24:52
The sky was in motion,
full of flesh-eating birds.
:24:55
And the noise of the birds...
:24:57
...their savage cries
as they circled...