Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/208

208THE HALLIG.

hastened joyfully to the door. He stood there — I saw
his face so plainly in the mist ! I was about to em-
brace him and bring him into the house — but his fea-
tures dissolved, and as they melted away I heard him
sigh, 'My poor, poor wife !' O, Godber, take pity on
me and row out ! I will go with you ; I am strong enough
to row. You do not know what a wife and mother can
do when straggling for the life of her husband."
  Mander vainly endeavored to represent to her the
powerful effects of imagination, and how natural it was
that her love which endured so reluctantly the absence
of her husband, should conjure up before her every pos-
sible cause for anxiety, which, after all, had its found-
ation only in her longing for his return, and perhaps
in the idea, too long indulged in, while alone, "what if
he should never return from some of these journeys ?"
In vain Godber spoke of the wind, of the weather, of
the tide, that there could not possibly be any danger,
but that detention must have been unavoidable. The
pastor's wife opposed to all these objections what she
had just seen. She told what she had thought and
done up to the very moment of this strange appear-
ance ; she declared that, at that time, there was in her
mind nothing but the most cheerful picture of the pas-
tor's return, and spoke with such certainty of convic-
tion, and gave such an exact description of the most
minute circumstance, that all further open objection
ceased. Godber, who participated with most sailors in
a readiness to believe in mysterious influences and won-
derful premonitions, had scarcely a doubt that there
was something of the kind here. As the distress of the
wife, like a flood restrained with difficulty for a short