“Aye! aye! like it? Enough!” Chelkash stopped him.

The boat darted on again, noiselessly and lightly threading its way among the vessels. All at once, they emerged from the labyrinth of ships, and the sea, boundless, powerful, lay open before them, stretching far into the distance, where there rose out of its waters masses of clouds, some lilac-blue with fluffy yellow edges, and some greenish like the color of the seawater, or those dismal, leaden-colored clouds that cast such heavy, dreary shadows. They crawled slowly after one another, one melting into another, one overtaking another, mingling their colors and shapes, dissolving and again arising in new forms, majestic and morose. There was something fateful in this slow procession of soulless masses. It seemed as though there, at the sea’s rim, they were a countless multitude, that they would forever crawl thus sluggishly over the sky, striving with dull malignance to hinder it from peeping at the sleeping sea with its millions of golden eyes, the vari-colored, vivid stars, that shine so dreamily and stir high hopes in all who love their pure light.

“Beautiful, eh, the sea?” asked Chelkash.

“It’s all right! Only I feel scared,” answered Gavrila, striking the water with the oars vigorously and evenly. The water faintly gurgled and splashed under the strokes of the long oars, splashed glittering with the warm, bluish, phosphorescent light.

“Scared! What a fool!” Chelkash muttered, sarcastically.

He, the thief, loved the sea. His effervescent, nervous nature, greedy after impressions, was never weary of gazing at that dark expanse, boundless, free, and mighty. And it hurt him to hear such an answer to his question about the beauty of what he loved. Sitting in the stern, he cleft the water with his oar, and looked on ahead quietly, filled with desire to glide far on this velvety surface, not soon to quit it.

On the sea there always rose up in him a broad, warm feeling, that took possession of his whole soul, and somewhat purified it from the sordidness of daily life. He valued this, and loved to feel himself better out here in the midst of the water and the air, where the cares of life, and life itself, always lose, the former their keenness, the latter its value. At night the soft sound of its drowsy breathing hovers over the sea, and this boundless sound fills man’s soul with quietude, and curbing his evil impulses, stirs in it potent dreams.

“But where’s the tackle? Eh?” Gavrila asked all at once, peering uneasily into the boat.

Chelkash started.

“Tackle? I’ve got it in the stern.”

“Why, what sort of tackle is it?” Gavrila inquired again.

But Chelkash felt ashamed to lie to this boy, and he was sorry to lose the thoughts and feelings which this peasant lad had destroyed by this question. He flew into a rage. That scalding bitterness he knew so well rose in his breast and his throat, and impressively and harshly he said to Gavrila:

“You’re sitting here—and I tell you, you’d better sit quiet. And not poke your nose into what’s not your business. You’ve been hired to row, and you’d better row. But if you can’t keep your tongue from wagging, it will be a bad lookout for you. D’ye see?”

For a minute the boat quivered and stopped. The oars rested in the water, setting it foaming, and Gavrila moved uneasily on his seat.

“Row!”