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Chap. XL.
OLD ABELLONA.
171
ing, their masts rising above the waters. They have
sinc^gone to pieces, but each receding wave still
discloses black timbers embedded in the sands. Having
no intention of bidding, and being literally blown to
shreds by the sea-side, I adjourned to the kro, where
the sale was preparing—house of as unpromising an
appearance as your worst enemy could ever wish you to
be lodged in.
Abellona, an old Jutland name, is most anxious we
should eat. She is a queer wrinkled old creature. Her
head-dress a sort of turban composed of a shawl-pattern
handkerchief, twisted round with a black coil of the
same material; her jacket fastened by two large amber
buttons (such as men wear on their coats) in quaint
old silver settings. We ask her where she got them ?
Got them ! they belonged to her grandmother, and
hers before her. They are pretty—Pretty! pretty as
Abellona is herself—and she laughs like an old witch.
Finding we admired the buttons, she pulls out from
within the kerchief which surrounds her withered throat
a necklace of amber beads as large as pigeon’s eggs
—clouded amber, such as the Easterns love—of the
purest quality—collected for her by her sons when
children—good for the eyes, she says; all the women
wear them; and they are right so to do in this
sandflying country. She had two sons still alive, both
pilots; and, as she told us how her two youngest had
both met ■with a watery grave, shipwrecked in some
winter-storm, her eyes filled with tears; then bursting
into an agony of grief, she hastily quitted the room.
Poor Abellona! she is not alone in her sorrow, for
fearful is the loss of life on this raging coast.
The life of a fisher is a fearful one; not so much
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