This wen was fully as large as a man's
head. Long yellow hair hung over his shoulders, and a huge red beard
reached to the middle of his breast--
His beard a foot before him, and his hair
A yard behind.
His moustache alone showed signs of the scissors: he had there cleared
a path through the russet jungle of his beard, that an entrance might
be had to the inner man. The eyes that looked out from this thicket of
hair had not that hard, dangerous, angry look that experience of such
persons had taught me to expect, but they expressed loneliness. He told
of the high tides of the month of January in a certain year, when the
water rose so as to enter his cabin and ponderous cakes of ice were
knocking and grinding against its sides in the night. We talked of
fish. He spoke of fyke-nets and drag-nets and warp-lines, and of
eel-spearing through the ice. He took especial delight in telling me
how the snow in winter was swept away from his door in a clean circle
by the broom of some friendly wind. "It is the wind that does it," said
he with touching naivete. It almost seemed to the poor old man's lonely
heart like a special favor on the part of the wind, like a tender
feeling and relenting on the part of the icy-hearted winter wind for
him in his solitude and sadness as he lay there cast out on the
desolate shore of the world, deformed and shattered in health--
Gleich einer Leiche
Die grollend ausgeworfen das Meer--
"Like a corpse which the bellowing sea
has cast out.
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