Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/534

 and at last one higher than the rest buried them in deep but clear water. He seemed for a moment confused, and heard sounds as of screaming birds, while shoals of fish passed before him. He had reached within a few cables’ length of the land, when he saw clearly beneath the water a white figure gazing at him; a wave lifted him, and the form approached. He felt a shock,—it grew dark, and everything vanished from his gaze.

On the sand-reef, covered with water at high-tide, lay part of the wreck of a vessel; the white figure-head resting against the anchor, the sharp, iron edge of which rose above the surface of the water. Jurgen had come in contact with this, and the tide had driven him against it with double force. He was sinking, fainting and stunned with the blow; but the next wave lifted him and the young girl towards the shore, and some fishermen approaching with a boat, grasped them and dragged them into it. The blood streamed down Jurgen’s face; he seemed dead, yet he still held the young girl so closely that they were obliged to take her from him by force. They laid her pale and lifeless in the boat, and rowed hastily to shore. Every means were tried to restore Clara to life, but they were useless. For some distance Jurgen had been swimming to shore with a corpse in his arms, and exhausting his strength for one who was dead.

Jurgen still breathed, so the fishermen carried him to the nearest house upon the sand-hills, where a smith and general dealer lived who knew some thing of surgery, and he bound up Jurgen’s wounds in a temporary manner, till a surgeon could be obtained next day from the nearest town. The brain of the injured man was affected, and in his delirium he uttered wild cries; but on the third day he lay quiet and exhausted on his couch. His life seemed to hang on a thread, and the surgeon said it would be better for him that this thread should be snapped. “Let us pray,” he said, “that God may take him to Himself, for he will never be the same man again.” But life would not depart from him—the thread would not snap, but the thread of memory broke—the thread of his mental power had been cut through; and more terrible still, a body remained—a living, healthy body, that wandered about like a spectre.

Jurgen remained in the house of the merchant Bronne. “He injured himself in his endeavours to save our child,” said the old man, “he is our son now.” People called Jurgen imbecile: that was not the correct term. He was like an instrument in which the strings are loose, and will give no sound. At times, and for a few minutes, they would regain their power and sound as of old. He would sing snatches of songs or old melodies; pictures of the past would rise before him, and then disappear as in a mist; but generally he would sit staring into vacancy—his mind a blank. We may believe that he did not suffer, but his dark eyes lost their brilliancy, and looked like clouded glass.

“Poor imbecile Jurgen,” said the people. And this was the end of a life whose infancy would have been cradled in luxury, had his parents lived! He was like a rare plant torn from its native soil, and thrown upon the sand to wither there. And was this one of God’s creatures, fashioned in His own image and after His likeness, to have no better destiny? Was he