Something white catches in the surf as the waves roll and retreat across the beach. Like a scrunched-up ball of paper batted between a kitten’s paws, it tumbles and spins in the water: caught, dropped, then suddenly tossed back into motion.

A tern skims low on angled wings for a closer look, one dark eye tracking the object along the drifting shoreline. Nothing else moves on the beach. No tracks mark the fine white sands. Nothing stirs in the dunes bristling with tufts of seagrass. The red and gold cliffs warm as the morning sun rises over the hills. The only sound is the irregular wallop of the waves and the hissing sigh of the retreating surf.

The mysterious object is a paper nautilus: not a true shell at all but the egg case of the pelagic octopus Argonauta nodosa. A shell more fragile than the finest Venetian milk glass. Nodules fan out in spiralled rows from the apex, tipped in brown along the double-ridged keel. The slightest pressure between two fingers would crush it like an eggshell. How could anything so brittle survive the ocean swells, much less the impact on the shore?

Despite its fragility as it rolls in the surf, the paper nautilus is still intact. Its voyager has long departed, leaving only the most insubstantial evidence of her ephemeral life on wild seas. A frail machine, indeed, to contain such a strong soul.