r a comrade eight hours in succession, amid suffocating heat.
One day, when he had fallen sick on account of overwork, he was lying on
the bow of the steamer, and when Foma asked him why he was thus ruining
himself, Ilya replied roughly and sternly:

"Because every copeck is more necessary to me than a hundred roubles to
you. That's why!"

And, saying this, the old man turned his body, which was burning with
pain, with its back to Foma.

Reflecting on the stoker his thoughts suddenly and without any effort,
embraced all those petty people that were doing hard work. He wondered,
Why do they live? What pleasure is it for them to live on earth? They
constantly do but their dirty, hard work, they eat poorly, are poorly
clad, they drink. One man is sixty years old, and yet he keeps on
toiling side by side with the young fellows. And they all appeared to
Foma as a huge pile of worms, which battled about on earth just to
get something to eat. In his memory sprang up his meetings with these
people, one after another--their remarks about life--now sarcastic and
mournful, now hopelessly gloomy remarks--their wailing songs. And now he
also recalled how one day in the office Yefim had said to the clerk who
hired the sailors:

"Some Lopukhin peasants have come here to hire themselves out, so don't
give them more than ten roubles a month. Their place was burned down to
ashes last summer, and they are now in dire need--they'll work for ten
roubles."

Sitting on the beams, Foma rocked his whole body to and fro, and out of
the darkness, from the river, various human figures appeared silently
before him--sailors, stokers, clerks, waiters, half-intoxicated painted
women, and tavern-loungers. They floated in the air like shadows;
something damp and brackish came from them, and the dark, dense throng
moved on slowly, noiselessly and swiftly, like clouds in an autumn sky.
The soft splashing of the waves poured into his soul like sadly sighing
music. Far away, somewhere on the other bank of the river, burned a
wood-pile; embraced by the darkness on all sides, it was at times almost
absorbed by it, and in the darkness it trembled, a reddish spot scarcely
visible to the eye. But now the fire flamed up again, the darkness
receded, and it was evident that the flame was striving upward. And then
it sank again.

"Oh Lord, Oh Lord!" thought Foma, painfully and bitterly, feeling that
grief was oppressing his heart with ever greater power. "Her