The sandbar closed off the horizon with a black line; through the open channel, the scrolls of the waves broke in phosphorescent landings of foam, huge stages which seemed to collapse with theatrical shocks at the very heart of the night. A solemn hissing rose from the sands, and like the fringe of the carpet overhanging a dream staircase, blinding sheets of surf smoothed themselves out on my feet over the dead waters. 

I turned my half-closed eyes, with their strange inward gaze, upward to the moon, and it was then that I was able to make out the just-discernible figures upon its surface. Slow and clumsy, the massive terraforming caterpillars were drilling against the embankment of lunar rock; and with their hard and chitinous carapaces, making cruel and elegant insectlike articulations, in gestures of cruel and almost amorous grace. 

They were following the coast for a moment and then, veering to the right of the channel and crossing the limit of the patrolled zone, soon vanished over the horizon.