n the wind's breaking loose from its chain? Suppose the fish
were as big as a mountain and its back were as hard as a sturgeon: and
in the same way, supposing that away yonder at the end of the world
there stood great stone walls and the fierce winds were chained up to
the walls... if they had not broken loose, why did they tear about all
over the sea like maniacs, and struggle to escape like dogs? If they
were not chained up, what did become of them when it was calm?

Gusev pondered for a long time about fishes as big as a mountain and
stout, rusty chains, then he began to feel dull and thought of his
native place to which he was returning after five years' service in the
East. He pictured an immense pond covered with snow.... On one side of
the pond the red-brick building of the potteries with a tall chimney
and clouds of black smoke; on the other side--a village.... His brother
Alexey comes out in a sledge from the fifth yard from the end; behind
him sits his little son Vanka in big felt over-boots, and his little
girl Akulka, also in big felt boots. Alexey has been drinking, Vanka is
laughing, Akulka's face he could not see, she had muffled herself up.

"You never know, he'll get the children frozen..." thought Gusev. "Lord
send them sense and judgment that they may honour their father and
mother and not be wiser than their parents."

"They want re-soleing," a delirious sailor says in a bass voice. "Yes,
yes!"

Gusev's thoughts break off, and instead of a pond there suddenly appears
apropos of nothing a huge bull's head without eyes, and the horse and
sledge are not driving along, but are whirling round and round in a
cloud of smoke. But still he was glad he had seen his own folks. He
held his breath from delight, shudders ran all over him, and his fingers
twitched.

"The Lord let us meet again," he muttered feverishly, but he at once
opened his eyes and sought in the darkness for water.

He drank and lay back, and again the sledge was moving, then again the
bull's head without eyes, smoke, clouds.... And so on till daybreak.

II

The first outline visible in the darkness was a blue circle--the
little round window; then little by little Gusev could distinguish his
neighbour in the next hammock, Pavel Ivanitch. The man slept sitting up,
as he could not breathe lying down. His face was grey, his nose was long
and sharp, his eyes looked huge from the terrible thinness of his face,
his temples were sunken, his