re.

Similarly, I myself was beginning to find things irksome and
uncomfortable, as always happens when a number of companions are
thinking different thoughts, and contain in themselves none of that
unity of will which alone can join men into a direct, uniform force.
Rather, I felt as though I could gladly leave my companions and start
out upon the ice alone.

Suddenly Ossip recovered his faculties. Rising, then doffing his cap
and making the sign of the cross in the direction of the town, he said
with a quiet, simple, yet somehow authoritative, air:

"Very well, my mates. Go in peace, and may the Lord go with you!"

"But whither?" asked Sashok, leaping to his feet. "To the town?"

"Whither else?"

The old soldier was the only one not to rise, and with conviction he
remarked:

"It will result but in our getting drowned."

"Then stay where you are."

Ossip glanced around the party. Then he continued:

"Bestir yourselves! Look alive!"

Upon which all crowded together, and Boev, thrusting the tools into a
hole in the bank, groaned:

"The order 'go' has been given, so go we MUST, well though a man in
receipt of such an order might ask himself, 'How is it going to be
done?'"

Ossip seemed, in some way, to have grown younger and more active, while
the habitually shy, though good-humoured, expression of his countenance
was gone from his ruddy features, and his darkened eyes had assumed an
air of stern activity. Nay, even his indolent, rolling gait had
disappeared, and in his step there was more firmness, more assurance,
than had ever before been the case.

"Let every man take a plank," he said, "and hold it in front of him.
Then, should anyone fall in (which God forbid!), the plank-ends will
catch upon the ice to either side of him, and hold him up. Also, every
man must avoid cracks in the ice. Yes, and is there a rope handy? Here,
Narodetz! Reach me that spirit-level. Is everyone ready? I will walk
first, and next there must come--well, which is the heaviest?--you,
soldier, and then Mokei, and then the Morduine, and then Boev, and then
Mishuk, and then Sashok, and then Makarei, the lightest of all. And do
you all take off your caps before starting, and say a prayer to the
Mother of God. Ha! Here is Old Father Sun coming out to greet us."

Readily did the men bare their tousled grey or flaxen heads as
momentarily the sun glanced through a bank of thin white vapour before
again concealing himself, as though