After a two-hour walk, Amos finally reached the bay of caverns. Exhausted, he sat on the beach pebbles and contemplated the low tide and the immense sculptures cut by the ocean that presided over the bay like petrified giants.

"Now, Amos, let's get started!" he told himself.

He quickly filled his two buckets with crabs. As Amos passed by the entrance of a grotto that was larger and higher than the others, he spotted a big black crow, dead on the shore. Amos raised his eyes toward the sky and saw at least twenty more flying in circles above the cliff.

�That's the way these birds fly when another animal is dying,� he thought. �They'll feed on the corpse. Maybe it's a big fish or a stranded whale. This dead crow wasn�t lucky. He probably broke his neck on the rock.�

As he carefully looked around for a helpless animal, Amos saw three more crows at the entrance of the grotto, but these were alive. Their eyes seemed riveted inside the cavern, as if they were trying to make sense of something in the belly of the rocky wall. Amos was approaching to find out what was going on when he heard a piercing scream. It came from the depths of the cavern; the frightening sound paralysed the birds. They fell dead on the spot.

Amos himself was knocked down -- as if hit by a strong blow -- by the intensity of the scream. He lay curled up, his heart beating madly. His legs refused to move. He had never heard such a noise. The scream, which seemed both human and animal, had to have been shrieked by powerful vocal cords.

Then Amos heard a woman's voice, as soft as a melody, and he came out of his daze.