where did he get the
strength for that?

He hoped.

THE OCEAN

CHAPTER I

A misty February twilight is descending over the ocean. The newly fallen
snow has melted and the warm air is heavy and damp. The northwestern
wind from the sea is driving it silently toward the mainland, bringing
in its wake a sharply fragrant mixture of brine, of boundless space, of
undisturbed, free and mysterious distances.

In the sky, where the sun is setting, a noiseless destruction of
an unknown city, of an unknown land, is taking place; structures,
magnificent palaces with towers, are crumbling; mountains are silently
splitting asunder and, bending slowly, are tumbling down. But no cry,
no moan, no crash of the fall reaches the earth--the monstrous play
of shadows is noiseless; and the great surface of the ocean, as though
ready for something, as though waiting for something, reflecting it
faintly, listens to it in silence.

Silence reigns also in the fishermen's settlement. The fishermen have
gone fishing; the children are sleeping and only the restless women,
gathered in front of the houses, are talking softly, lingering before
going to sleep, beyond which there is always the unknown.

The light of the sea and the sky behind the houses, and the houses and
their bark roofs are black and sharp, and there is no perspective: the
houses that are far and those that are near seem to stand side by side
as if attached to one another, the roofs and the walls embracing one
another, pressing close to one another, seized with the same uneasiness
before the eternal unknown.

Right here there is also a little church, its side wall formed crudely
of rough granite, with a deep window which seems to be concealing
itself.

A cautious sound of women's voices is heard, softened by uneasiness and
by the approaching night.

"We can sleep peacefully to-night. The sea is calm and the rollers are
breaking like the clock in the steeple of old Dan."

"They will come back with the morning tide. My husband told me that they
will come back with the morning tide."

"Perhaps they will come back with the evening tide. It is better for us
to think they will come back in the evening, so that our waiting will
not be in vain.

"But I must build a fire in the stove."

"When the men are away from home, one does not feel like starting a
fire. I never build a fire, even when I am awake; it seems to me that
fire brings a storm. It is better to