“Hi! Asleep? Hold it! Carefully!” sounded the hollow voice of Chelkash.

From the wall something cubical and heavy was let down. Gavrila took it into the boat. Something else like it followed. Then across the wall stretched Chelkash’s long figure, the oars appeared from somewhere, Gavrila’s bag dropped at his feet, and Chelkash, breathing heavily, settled himself in the stern.

Gavrila gazed at him with a glad and timid smile.

“Tired?”

“Bound to be that, calf! Come now, row your best! Put your back into it! You’ve earned good wages, mate. Half the job’s done. Now we’ve only to slip under the devils’ noses, and then you can take your money and go off to your Mashka. You’ve got a Mashka, I suppose, eh, kiddy?”

“No-o!” Gavrila strained himself to the utmost, working his chest like a pair of bellows, and his arms like steel springs. The water gurgled under the boat, and the blue streak behind the stern was broader now. Gavrila was soaked through with sweat at once, but he still rowed on with all his might. After living through such terror twice that night, he dreaded now having to go through it a third time, and longed for one thing only—to make an end quickly of this accursed task, to get on to land, and to run away from this man, before he really did kill him, or get him into prison. He resolved not to speak to him about anything, not to contradict him, to do all he told him, and, if he should succeed in getting successfully quit of him, to pay for a thanksgiving service to be said tomorrow to Nikolai the Wonder-worker. A passionate prayer was ready to burst out from his bosom. But he restrained himself, puffed like a steam-engine and was silent, glancing from under his brows at Chelkash.

The latter, with his lean, long figure bent forward like a bird about to take flight, stared into the darkness ahead of the boat with his hawk eyes, and turning his rapacious, hooked nose from side to side, gripped with one hand the rudder handle, while with the other he twirled his mustache, that was continually quivering with smiles which crooked his thin lips. Chelkash was pleased with his success, with himself, and with this youth, who had been so frightened of him and had been turned into his slave. He watched how he was toiling, and felt sorry for him, wanted to encourage him.

“Eh!” he said softly, with a grin. “Were you awfully scared, eh?”

“Oh, no!” sighed Gavrila, and he cleared his throat.

“But now you needn’t work so at the oars. Ease off! There’s only one place now to pass. Rest a bit.”

Gavrila obediently paused, rubbed the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his shirt, and dropped the oars again into the water.

“Now, row more slowly, so that the water shouldn’t bubble. We’ve only the gates to pass. Softly, softly. For they’re serious people here, mate. They might take a pop at one in a minute. They’d give you such a bump on your forehead, you wouldn’t have time to call out.”

The boat now crept along over the water almost without a sound. Only from the oars dripped blue drops of water, and when they trickled into the sea, a blue patch of light was kindled for a minute where they fell. The night had become still darker and more silent. The sky was no longer like a sea in turmoil, the clouds were spread out and covered it with a smooth, heavy canopy that hung low over the water and did not stir. And the sea was still more calm and black, and stronger than ever was the warm salt smell from it.

“Ah, if only it would rain!” whispered Chelkash. “We could get through then, behind a curtain as it were.”

On the right and the left of the boat, like houses rising out of the black water, stood barges, black, motionless, and gloomy. On one of them moved a light; someone was walking up and down with a lantern. The