pity in the sea. Had the steamer been
smaller, and not made of tough iron, the waves would have crushed it
remorselessly and all the men in it, without distinction of good and
bad. The steamer too seemed cruel and senseless. The large-nosed monster
pressed forward and cut its way through millions of waves; it was
afraid neither of darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor of
loneliness; it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, the
monster would crush them without distinction of good and bad.

"Where are we now?" asked Goussiev.

"I don't know. Must be the ocean."

"There's no land in sight."

"Why, they say we shan't see land for another seven days."

The two soldiers looked at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence.
Goussiev was the first to break the silence.

"Nothing is really horrible," he said. "You feel uneasy, as if you were
in a dark forest. Suppose a boat were lowered and I was ordered to go a
hundred miles out to sea to fish--I would go. Or suppose I saw a soul
fall into the water--I would go in after him. I wouldn't go in for a
German or a Chinaman, but I'd try to save a Russian."

"Aren't you afraid to die?"

"Yes. I'm afraid. I'm sorry for the people at home. I have a brother at
home, you know, and he is not steady; he drinks, beats his wife for
nothing at all, and my old father and mother may be brought to ruin. But
my legs are giving way, mate, and it is hot here.... Let me go to bed."

V

Goussiev went back to the ward and lay down in his hammock. As before, a
vague desire tormented him and he could not make out what it was. There
was a congestion in his chest; a noise in his head, and his mouth was so
dry that he could hardly move his tongue. He dozed and dreamed, and,
exhausted by the heat, his cough and the nightmares that haunted him,
toward morning he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed he was in barracks,
and the bread had just been taken out of the oven, and he crawled into
the oven and lathered himself with a birch broom. He slept for two days
and on the third day in the afternoon two sailors came down and carried
him out of the ward.

He was sewn up in sail-cloth, and to make him heavier two iron bars were
sewn up with him. In the sail-cloth he looked like a carrot or a radish,
broad at the top, narrow at the bottom.... Just before sunset he was
taken on deck and laid on a board one end of which lay on the bulwark,
the other on a box, raised up by a stool.