there, and where now seagulls flocked
screaming over the white surf. The rest had been devoured by the
ocean.

It was Soeren's, and more particularly Maren's foolish pride that his
forefathers had owned a farm. It had been there sure enough three or
four generations back; with a fairly good ground, a clay bank
jutting out into the sea. A strong four-winged house, built of
oak--taken from wrecks--could be seen from afar, a picture of
strength. But then suddenly the ocean began to creep in. Three
generations, one after the other, were forced to shift the farm
further back to prevent its falling into the sea, and to make the
moving easier, each time a wing was left behind; there was, of
course, no necessity for so much house-room, when the land was eaten
by the sea. All that now remained was the heavy-beamed old
dwelling-house which had prudently been placed on the landward side
of the road, and a few sandhills.

Here the sea no longer encroached. Now the best had gone, with the
lands of Man, it was satiated and took its costly food elsewhere;
here, indeed, it gave back again, throwing sand up on to the land,
which formed a broad beach in front of the slope, and on windy days
would drift, covering the rest of the field. Under the thin
straggling downs could still be traced the remains of old plowland,
broken off crudely on the slope, and of old wheeltracks running
outwards and disappearing abruptly in the blue sky over the sea.

For many years, after stormy nights with the sea at high tide, it
had been the Man's invariable custom each morning to find out how
much had again been taken by the sea; burrowing animals hastened the
destruction; and it happened that whole pieces of field with their
crops would suddenly go; down in the muttering ocean it lay, and on
it the mark of harrow and plow and the green reflection of winter
crops over it.

It told on a man to be witness of the inevitable. For each time a
piece of their land was taken by the sea with all their toil and
daily bread on its back, they themselves declined. For every fathom
that the ocean stole nearer to the threshold of their home, nibbling
at their good earth, their status and courage grew correspondingly
less.

For a long time they struggled against it, and clung to the land
until necessity drove them back to the sea. Soeren was the first to
give himself entirely up to it: he took his wife from the hamlet and
became a fisherman. But they were none the