Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/164

164THE HALLIG.

If she was pleased with her present mode of life, it was
only the momentary charm of novelty, of something
which was certainly different from all the former asso-
ciations, and the attraction of domestic duties. For
the amusement of a few weeks such an existence was
well enough — might even serve as a substitute for a
new watering-place ; but to remain forever on this
island whose inhabitants must renounce all the enjoy-
ments of life, where life itself was always in danger,
that was a thought so far from her that she could not
suppose it to be even in the mind of another to whom
a choice of something better was possible, especially, if
to this were to be added all that love, wealth, and in-
tercourse with the world can offer.
  But if we were to suppose Godber capable of giving
up his sea-washed home for any such prospect, we
should have sketched in him no true son of the hallig.
  The author has seen the hallig, which is the scene of
our story, when half the houses were heaped up in ruins
on the dikes of the mainland, and of the other half
only the bare frame-work and roofs remained to show
that they had once been inhabited — when only a single
cabin stood on its washed and crumbling wharf, suffi-
ciently firm to serve as a refuge for those of the inhab-
itants who had escaped death — when the adjoining
island presented nothing but a naked flat from which
mounds, houses, flocks, and men, had been swept off in
a single night, without leaving a trace of their former
existence. He has seen those to whom life seemed
scarcely a desirable gift, in the midst of this awful des-
olation, in which they had lost every thing, while the
recollection of the terrors of that fearful night was still