Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/278

278THE HALLIG.

band, still higher, to prevent its drowning in her arms.
But help had been provided for them long before any
mortal could have dreamed of this danger. The wine
cask which Mander had forced the pastor to accept,
having been probably undermined by the water, was,
rolled over by a heavy wave and left standing directly
under the opening into the garret, at which they had
been gazing with such longing despair. Inspired with
new hope, they succeeded by the aid of this cask, in
climbing into the loft. But what a place of refuge !
A floor, already shattered by the tempest, supported by
piles which were trembling at every shock of the waves.
Around and beneath them the angry ocean whose bil-
lows often threw their foaming spray over the very roof
and poured abundant streams through its openings. In
this situation, quiet compared with that from which
they had just escaped, the child soon fell into a gentle
slumber which was not broken by the hot tears that the
mother dropped upon her precious burden. But the
neighbor's wife, starting from a torpid silence, began
once more to moan aloud for her son. And now the
church, which, we have already said, was under the
same roof, was swept away. This would have been
quite unnoticed — for the howling of the wind, the roar
of the waves, and the creaking of the timbers in every
joint, united in such a deafening confusion, that not
even the thunder of heaven could have been heard —
had not the falling church carried away with it the
studs which had, till now, supported the roof on two
sides leaving of the garret floor, only a couple of nar-
row boards, with a few rafters above it, over which the
thatching hung in rags, thus completely exposing the