he spoke--he was not at all like a monk. He was
losing strength through his cough and his illness and the suffocating
heat, and he breathed heavily and was always moving his dry lips.
Noticing that Goussiev was looking at him, he turned toward him and
said:

"I'm beginning to understand.... Yes.... Now I understand."

"What do you understand, Pavel Ivanich?"

"Yes.... It was strange to me at first, why you sick men, instead of
being kept quiet, should be on this steamer, where the heat is stifling,
and stinking, and pitching and tossing, and must be fatal to you; but
now it is all clear to me.... Yes. The doctors sent you to the steamer
to get rid of you. They got tired of all the trouble you gave them,
brutes like you.

...You don't pay them; you only give a lot of trouble, and if you die
you spoil their reports. Therefore you are just cattle, and there is no
difficulty in getting rid of you.... They only need to lack conscience
and humanity, and to deceive the owners of the steamer. We needn't worry
about the first, they are experts by nature; but the second needs a
certain amount of practice. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers
and sailors--five sick men are never noticed; so you were carried up to
the steamer, mixed with a healthy lot who were counted in such a hurry
that nothing wrong was noticed, and when the steamer got away they saw
fever-stricken and consumptive men lying helpless on the deck...."

Goussiev could not make out what Pavel Ivanich was talking about;
thinking he was being taken to task, he said by way of excusing himself:

"I lay on the deck because when we were taken off the barge I caught a
chill."

"Shocking!" said Pavel Ivanich. "They know quite well that you can't
last out the voyage, and yet they send you here! You may get as far as
the Indian Ocean, but what then? It is awful to think of.... And that's
all the return you get for faithful unblemished service!"

Pavel Ivanich looked very angry, and smote his forehead and gasped:

"They ought to be shown up in the papers. There would be an awful row."

The two sick soldiers and the sailor were already up and had begun to
play cards, the sailor propped up in his hammock, and the soldiers
squatting uncomfortably on the floor. One soldier had his right arm in a
sling and his wrist was tightly bandaged so that he had to hold the
cards in his left hand or in the crook of his elbow. The boat was
rolling violently so that it was im