teeth, drew in deep breaths of the damp sea air, looked about him in the darkness, and smiled good- naturedly when his eyes rested on Gavrila.

The wind blew up and waked the sea into a sudden play of fine ripples. The clouds had become, as it were, finer and more transparent, but the sky was still covered with them. The wind, though still light, blew freely over the sea, yet the clouds were motionless and seemed plunged in some gray, dreary reverie.

“Come, mate, pull yourself together! It’s high time! Why, what a fellow you are; as though all the breath had been knocked out of your skin, and only a bag of bones was left! It’s all over now! Hey!”

It was pleasant to Gavrila to hear a human voice, even though Chelkash it was that spoke.

“I hear,” he said softly.

“Come, then, milksop. Come, you sit at the rudder and I’ll take the oars, you must be tired!”

Mechanically Gavrila changed places. When Chelkash, as he changed places with him, glanced into his face, and noticed that he was staggering on his shaking legs, he felt still sorrier for the lad. He clapped him on the shoulder.

“Come, come, don’t be scared! You’ve earned a good sum for it. I’ll pay you richly, mate. Would you like twenty-five rubles, eh?”

“I—don’t want anything. Only to be on shore.”

Chelkash waved his hand, spat, and fell to rowing, flinging the oars far back with his long arms.

The sea had waked up. It frolicked in little waves, bringing them forth, decking them with a fringe of foam, flinging them on one another, and breaking them up into fine spray. The foam, melting, hissed and sighed, and everything was filled with the musical plash and noise. The darkness seemed more alive.

“Come, tell me,” began Chelkash, “you’ll go home to the village, and you’ll marry and begin digging the earth and sowing corn, your wife will bear you children, food won’t be too plentiful, and so you’ll grind away all your life. Well? Is there such sweetness in that?”

“Sweetness, indeed!” Gavrila answered, timid and trembling. “Not much!”

Here and there the wind tore a rent in the clouds and through the gaps peeped blue bits of sky, with one or two stars. Reflected in the frolicking sea, these stars danced on the waves, vanishing and shining out again.

“More to the right!” said Chelkash. “Soon we shall be there. Well, well! It’s over. A haul that’s worth it! See here. One night, and I’ve made five hundred rubles! Eh? What do you say to that?”

“Five hundred?” Gavrila drawled, incredulously, but he was scared at once, and quickly asked, prodding the bales in the boat with his foot, “Why, what sort of thing may this be?”

“That’s a costly thing. All that, if one sold it for its value, would fetch a thousand. But I sell cheap. Is that smart business?”

“Ye-es,” Gavrila drawled dubiously. “If I had all that!” he sighed, recalling all at once the village, his poor little bit of land, his poverty, his mother, and all that was so far away and so near his heart; for the sake of which he had gone to seek work, for the sake of which he had suffered such agonies that night. There came back to him a flood of memories of his village, running down the steep slope to the river and losing