the wood there were
huge stone walls with the snarling winds chained up to them.... If they
do not break loose, why then do they rage over the sea as though they
were possessed, and rush about like dogs? If they are not chained, what
happens to them when it is calm?

Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as a mountain, and of
thick rusty chains; then he got tired of that and began to think of his
native place whither he was returning after five years' service in the
Far East. He saw with his mind's eye the great pond covered with
snow.... On one side of the pond was a brick-built pottery, with a tall
chimney belching clouds of black smoke, and on the other side was the
village.... From the yard of the fifth house from the corner came his
brother Alency in a sledge; behind him sat his little son Vanka in large
felt boots, and his daughter Akulka, also in felt boots. Alency is
tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden--she is well wrapped
up.

"The children will catch cold ..." thought Goussiev. "God grant them,"
he whispered, "a pure right mind that they may honour their parents and
be better than their father and mother...."

"The boots want soling," cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. "Aye,
aye."

The thread of Goussiev's thoughts was broken, and instead of the pond,
suddenly--without rhyme or reason--he saw a large bull's head without
eyes, and the horse and sledge did not move on, but went round and round
in a black mist. But still he was glad he had seen his dear ones. He
gasped for joy, and his limbs tingled and his fingers throbbed.

"God suffered me to see them!" he muttered, and opened his eyes and
looked round in the darkness for water.

He drank, then lay down again, and once more the sledge skimmed along,
and he saw the bull's head without eyes, black smoke, clouds of it. And
so on till dawn.

II

At first through the darkness there appeared only a blue circle, the
port-hole, then Goussiev began slowly to distinguish the man in the next
hammock, Pavel Ivanich. He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if he
lay down he could not breathe. His face was grey; his nose long and
sharp, and his eyes were huge, because he was so thin; his temples were
sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long.... By his face it was
impossible to tell his class: gentleman, merchant, or peasant; judging
by his appearance and long hair he looked almost like a recluse, a
lay-brother, but when