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Updated: June 25, 2025
"How do I know, Pavel Ivanich? The likes of us don't hear of it." A long time passed in silence. Goussiev thought, dreamed, drank water; it was difficult to speak, difficult to hear, and he was afraid of being spoken to. One hour passed, a second, a third; evening came, then night; but he noticed nothing as he sat dreaming of the snow.
Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as a mountain, and of thick rusty chains; then he got tired of that and began to think of his native place whither he was returning after five years' service in the Far East.
"I have not written home," said Goussiev. "I shall die and they will never know." "They will know," said the sailor in his deep voice. "When you die they will put you down in the log, and at Odessa they will give a note to the military governor, and he will send it to your parish or wherever it is...."
At first through the darkness there appeared only a blue circle, the port-hole, then Goussiev began slowly to distinguish the man in the next hammock, Pavel Ivanich. He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if he lay down he could not breathe.
The large-nosed monster pressed forward and cut its way through millions of waves; it was afraid neither of darkness, nor of the wind, nor of space, nor of loneliness; it cared for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, the monster would crush them without distinction of good and bad. "Where are we now?" asked Goussiev. "I don't know. Must be the ocean." "There's no land in sight."
What fun when the sledge topples over and you are flung hard into a snow-drift; with your face slap into the snow, and you get up all white with your moustaches covered with icicles, hatless, gloveless, with your belt undone.... People laugh and dogs bark.... Pavel Ivanich, with one eye half open looked at Goussiev and asked quietly: "Goussiev, did your commander steal?"
Overhead there was shouting, sailors running; the sound of something heavy being dragged along the deck, or something had broken.... More running. Something wrong? Goussiev raised his head, listened and saw the two soldiers and the sailor playing cards again; Pavel Ivanich sitting up and moving his lips.
He could hear some one coming into the ward; voices, but five minutes passed and all was still. "God rest his soul!" said the soldier with the bandaged hand. "He was a restless man." "What?" asked Goussiev. "Who?" "He's dead. He has just been taken up-stairs." "Oh, well," muttered Goussiev with a yawn. "God rest his soul." "What do you think, Goussiev?" asked the bandaged soldier after some time.
The soldiers and the crew crossed themselves and looked askance at the waves. It was strange that a man should be sewn up in sail-cloth and dropped into the sea. Could it happen to any one? The priest sprinkled Goussiev with earth and bowed. A hymn was sung. The guard lifted up the end of the board, Goussiev slipped down it; shot headlong, turned over in the air, then plop!
Alency is tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden she is well wrapped up. "The children will catch cold ..." thought Goussiev. "God grant them," he whispered, "a pure right mind that they may honour their parents and be better than their father and mother...." "The boots want soling," cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. "Aye, aye."
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