“Here, you listen! If anyone asks you anything—hold your tongue, if you want to get off alive! Do you see?”

“Oh—oh!” Gavrila sighed hopelessly in answer to the grim advice, and bitterly he added: “I’m a lost man!”

“Don’t whine!” Chelkash whispered impressively.

This whisper deprived Gavrila of all power of grasping anything and transformed him into a senseless automaton, wholly absorbed in a chill presentiment of calamity. Mechanically he lowered the oars into the water, threw himself back, drew them out and dropped them in again, all the while staring blankly at his bast shoes. The waves splashed against the vessels with a sort of menace, a sort of warning in their drowsy sound that terrified him. The dock was reached. From its granite wall came the sound of men’s voices, the splash of water, singing, and shrill whistles.

“Stop!” whispered Chelkash. “Give over rowing! Push along with your hands on the wall! Quietly, you devil!”

Gavrila, clutching at the slippery stone, pushed the boat alongside the wall. The boat moved without a sound, sliding alongside the green, shiny stone.

“Stop! Give me the oars! Give them here. Where’s your passport? In the bag? Give me the bag! Come, give it here quickly! That, my dear fellow, is so you shouldn’t run off. You won’t run away now. Without oars you might have got off somehow, but without a passport you’ll be afraid to. Wait here! But mind—if you peep—I’ll find you at the bottom of the sea!”

And, all at once, clinging to something with his hands, Chelkash rose in the air and vanished over the wall.

Gavrila shuddered. It had all happened so quickly. He felt as though the cursed weight and horror that had crushed him in the presence of this lean thief with his mustaches was loosened and rolling off him. Now to run! And breathing freely, he looked round him. On his left rose a black hulk, without masts, a sort of huge coffin, a mole, untenanted, and desolate. Every splash of the water on its sides awakened a hollow, resonant echo within it, like a heavy sigh.

On the right the damp stone wall of the mole trailed its length, winding like a heavy, chill serpent. Behind him, too, could be seen black shapes of some sort, while in front, in the opening between the wall and the side of that coffin, he could see the sea, a silent waste, with the storm-clouds crawling above it. They were moving slowly, huge, ponderous, emanating terror, and ready to crush you with their weight. Everything was cold, black, sinister. Gavrila felt panic-stricken. This terror was worse than the terror inspired in him by Chelkash; it penetrated into Gavrila’s bosom with icy keenness, huddled him into a cowering mass, and kept him nailed to his seat in the boat.

All around was silent. Not a sound but the sighs of the sea. The clouds were crawling over the sky as dismally as before; more of them still rose up out of the sea, and, gazing at the sky, one might believe that it, too, was a sea, but a sea in agitation and lay over that other sea beneath that was so drowsy, serene, and smooth. The clouds were like waves, flinging themselves with curly gray crests down upon the earth and into the abysses of space, from which they were torn again by the wind, and tossed back upon the rising billows of cloud, that were not yet hidden under the greenish foam of their furious agitation.

Gavrila felt crushed by this gloomy stillness and beauty, and felt that he longed to see his master come back quickly. And what if he failed to return? The time passed slowly, more slowly than those clouds crawled over the sky. And the stillness grew more sinister as time went on. From the wall of the mole came the sound of splashing, rustling, and something like whispering. It seemed to Gavrila that he would die that moment.