n like some maniac, especially one of his blue woolen jerseys,
which still had preserved his shape; when she threw it gently on the
table, it fell with the shoulders and chest well defined; so she placed
it by itself on a shelf of their wardrobe, and left it there, so that it
might for ever rest unaltered.

Every night the cold mists sank upon the land, as she gazed over the
depressing heath through her little window, and watched the paltry 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, cosy and warm; for the spring-time 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.

CHAPTER IX--WEDDED TO THE SEA

But he never returned. One August night, out off gloomy Iceland, mingled
with the furious clamour of the sea, his wedding with the sea was
performed. It had been his nurse; it had rocked him in his babyhood, and
had afterward 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. He, thinking of Gaud, his
sole, darling wife, had battled with giant strength against this deathly
rival, until he at last surrendered, with a deep death-cry like the roar
of a dying bull, through a mouth already filled with water; and his arms
were stretched apart and stiffened for ever.

All those he had invited in days of old were present at his wedding. All
except Sylvestre, who had gone to sleep in the enchanted gardens far,
far away, at the other side of the earth.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Iceland Fisherman, by Pierre Loti

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