mist, in which the sea moaned with
a prolonged monotonous sound, "Ah! . . . ah! . . . ah! . . . ah!
. . ." And it was only when the overseer was lighting his pipe,
casting as he did so a passing ray of light on the escort with a
gun and on the coarse faces of two or three of the nearest convicts,
or when he went with his lantern close to the water that the white
crests of the foremost waves could be discerned.

One of this gang was Yakov Ivanitch, nicknamed among the convicts
the "Brush," on account of his long beard. No one had addressed him
by his name or his father's name for a long time now; they called
him simply Yashka.

He was here in disgrace, as, three months after coming to Siberia,
feeling an intense irresistible longing for home, he had succumbed
to temptation and run away; he had soon been caught, had been
sentenced to penal servitude for life and given forty lashes. Then
he was punished by flogging twice again for losing his prison
clothes, though on each occasion they were stolen from him. The
longing for home had begun from the very time he had been brought
to Odessa, and the convict train had stopped in the night at
Progonnaya; and Yakov, pressing to the window, had tried to see his
own home, and could see nothing in the darkness. He had no one with
whom to talk of home. His sister Aglaia had been sent right across
Siberia, and he did not know where she was now. Dashutka was in
Sahalin, but she had been sent to live with some ex-convict in a
far away settlement; there was no news of her except that once a
settler who had come to the Voevodsky Prison told Yakov that Dashutka
had three children. Sergey Nikanoritch was serving as a footman at
a government official's at Due, but he could not reckon on ever
seeing him, as he was ashamed of being acquainted with convicts of
the peasant class.

The gang reached the mine, and the men took their places on the
quay. It was said there would not be any loading, as the weather
kept getting worse and the steamer was meaning to set off. They
could see three lights. One of them was moving: that was the
steam-cutter going to the steamer, and it seemed to be coming back
to tell them whether the work was to be done or not. Shivering with
the autumn cold and the damp sea mist, wrapping himself in his short
torn coat, Yakov Ivanitch looked intently without blinking in the
direction in which lay his home. Ever since he had lived in prison
together with men banished here