Every night the cold mists sank upon the land, as she gazed over the
depressing heath through her little window, and watched the thin puffs
of white smoke arise from the chimneys of other cottages scattered here
and there on all sides. There the husbands had returned, like
wandering birds driven home by the frost. Before their blazing hearths
the evenings passed, cozy and warm; for the springtime of love had
begun again in this land of North Sea fishermen.
Still clinging to the thought of those islands where he might perhaps
have lingered, she was buoyed up by a kind hope, and expected him home
any day.
* * * * * *
But he never returned. One August night, out off gloomy Iceland,
mingled with the furious clamor of the sea, his wedding with the sea
was performed. It had been his nurse; it had rocked him in his
babyhood and had afterwards made him big and strong; then, in his
superb manhood, it had taken him back again for itself alone.
Profoundest mystery had surrounded this unhallowed union. While it
went on, dark curtains hung pall-like over it as if to conceal the
ceremony, and the ghoul howled in an awful, deafening voice to stifle
his cries.
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