- The sun is continuing to rise. The light is almost piercing the waves as they spread over the beach in a fan shape.
- The hollows of the waves are darkening and deepening, leaving twigs and cork on the shore as they recede (3a.1).
- Now we're in the garden. The birds are singing together in a chorus, swerving together, until a black cat moves in the bushes and a nearby cook (whoa, a person!) throws out some cinders, startling them (3a.2).
- Apparently fear is in their song; they are singing "emulously" and are swerving above the elm tree (3a.2).
- They land and sit silently on the wall, looking all around. They are intensely aware of one thing, a particular object (which is unnamed here). The narrator suggests that perhaps it is a snail shell, flowers, or some other aspect of the garden surroundings (3a.3).
- Modernism: not big on explanation.
- Now the birds are looking deeper, beneath the flowers into the "unlit" world, where there are rotting leaves, dead flowers, and various other decaying and gooey things (3a.4). Birds with X-ray specs?
- One of birds breaks away to attack a worm and leave it to die (3a.4). What a jerk.
- The narrator goes on to describe this scene of decay beneath the flowers, where the birds are picking at all the dead and decaying things on the garden floor (e.g., rotten fruit) (3a.4).
- Inside the house, the rising sun is coming in the window. The narrator describes the effect of the light on the room's objects, including the plate, the knife, the chairs, the cupboards, and the looking glass, which is whitening (3a.5).
- The narrator notes that the "real" flower on the windowsill has a phantom twin (3a.5). This maybe means the one in the looking glass, but it is not clear because Modernism.
- The wind rises, and the waves "drum" on the shore. The waves are compared to warriors with poison spears who are attacking sheep (3a.6). Wow, this chapter intro/interlude has been pretty savage. Savagely difficult to understand.