There is a sound as though someone were coming into the infirmary, voices are heard, but five minutes pass and all is quiet again.
"The kingdom of Heaven be his and eternal peace," says the soldier with a bandaged arm. "He was an un- easy chap."
"What?" asks Gusev. "Who?"
"He died, they have just carried him up."
"Oh, well," mutters Gusev, yawning, "the kingdom of Heaven be his."
"What do you think, Gusev?" the soldier with the bandaged arm says after a while. "Will he be in the kingdom of Heaven or not?"
"Who do you mean?"
"Pavel Ivanych."
"He will . . . He suffered so long. Then again, he belonged to the clergy and priests have a lot of relatives. Their prayers will get him there."
The soldier with the bandage sits down on Gusev's bunk and says in an undertone:
"You too, Gusev, aren't long for this world. You will never get to Russia."
"Did the doctor or the nurse say so?" asks Gusev.
"It isn't that they said so, but one can see it. It's plain when a man will die soon. You don't eat, you don't drink, you've got so thin it's dreadful to look at you. It's consumption, in a word. I say it not to worry you, but because maybe you would like to receive the sacrament and extreme unction. And if you have any money, you had better turn it over to the senior officer."
"I haven't written home," Gusev sighs. "I shall die and they won't know."
"They will," the sick sailor says in a bass voice. "When you die, they will put it do^ in the ship's log, in Odessa they will send a copy of the entry to the army authorities, and they will notify your district board or somebody like that."
Such a conversation makes Gusev uneasy and a vague craving begins to torment him. He takes a drink —it isn't that; he drags himself to the porthole and breathes the hot, moist air—it isn't that; he tries to think of home, of the frost—it isn't that • . • At last it seems to him that if he stays in the infirmary another minute, he wiU certainly choke to death.
"It's stifling, brother," he says. "I'U go on deck. Take me there, for Christ's sake."
"All right," the soldier with the bandage agrees. "Yoou can't walk, I'll carry you. Hold on to my neck."
Gusev puts his arm around the soldier's neck, the lat- ter places his uninjured arm round him and carries him up. On the deck, discharged soldiers and sailors are lying asleep side by side; there are so many of them it is difficult to pass.
"Get down on the floor," the soldier with the bandage says softly. "Follow me quietly, hold on to my shirt."
It is dark, there are no lights on deck or on the masts or anywhere on the sea around. On the prow the seaman on watch stands perfectly still like a statue, and it looks as though he, too, were asleep. The steamer seems to be left to its own devices and to be going where it pleases.
"Now they'll throw Pavel Ivanych into the sea," says the soldier with the bandage, "in a sack and then into the water."
"Yes, that's the regulation."
"At home, it's better to lie in the earth. Anyway, your mother will come to the grave and shed a tear."
"Sure."
There is a smell of dung and hay. With drooping heads, steers stand at the ship's rail. One, two, three— eight of theml And there's a pony. Gusev puts out his hand to stroke it, but it shakes its head, shows its teeth, and tries to bite his sleeve.
"Damn bmtel" says Gusev crossly.
The two of them thread their way to the prow, then stand at the rail, peering. Overhead there is deep sky, bright stars, peace and quiet, exactly as at home in the village. But below there is darkness and disorder. Tall waves are making an uproar for no reason. Each one of them as you look at it is trying to rise higher than all the rest and to chase and crush its neighbor; it is thun- derously attacked by a third wave that has a gleaming white mane and is just as ferocious and ugly.
The sea has neither sense nor pity. If the steamer had been smaller, not made of thick iron plates, the waves would have crushed it without the slightest remorse, and would have devoured all the people in it without distinguishing between saints and sinners. The steamer's expression was equally senseless and cruel. This beaked monster presses forward, cutting millions of waves in its path; it fears neither darkness nor the wind, nor space, nor solitude—it's all child's play for it, and if the ocean had its population, this monster would crush it, too, without distinguishing between saints and sinners.
"Where are we now?" asks Gusev.
"I don't know. Must be the ocean."
"You can't see land . . ."
"No chance of itl They say we'll see it only in seven days."
The two men stare silently at the white phosphores- cent foam and brood. Gusev is fir!!t to break the silence.
"There is nothing frightening here," he says. "Only you feel queer as if you were in a dark forest; but if, let's say, they lowered the boat this minute and an offi- cer ordered me to go fifty miles across the sea to catch fish, I'll go. Or, let's say, if a Christian were to fall into the water right now, I'd jump in after him. A German or a Chink I wouldn't try to save, but I'd go in after a Christian."
"And are you afraid to die?" -
"I am. I ^ sorry about the farm. My brother at horne, you know, isn't steady; he drinks, he beats his wife for no reason, he doesn't honor his father and mother. With- out me everything will go to rack and ruin, and before long it's my fear that my father and old mother will be begging their bread. But my legs won't hold me up, brother, and it's stifling here. Let's go to sleep."
v
Gusev goes back to the infirmary and gets into his bunk. He is again tormented by a vague desire and he can't make out what it is that he wants. There is a weight on his chest, a throbbing in his head, his mouth is so dry that it is difficult for him to move his tongue. He dozes and talks in his sleep and, worn out with nightmares, with coughing and the stifling heat, towards morning he falls into a heavy sleep. He dreams that they have just taken the bread out of the oven in the barracks and that he has climbed into the oven and is having a steam bath there, lashing himself with a besom of birch twigs. He sleeps for two days and on the third at noon hyo sailors come down and carry him out of the in- firmary. He is sewn up in sailcloth and to make him heavier, they put two gridirons in with him. Sewnwn up in sailcloth, he looks like a carrot or a radish: broad at the head and narrow at the feet. Before sunset, they c^^ him on deck and put him on a plank. One end of the plank lies on the ship's rail, the other on a box placed on a stool. Round him stand the discharged soldiers and the crew with heads bared.
"Blessed is our God," the priest begins, "now, and ever, and unto ages of ages."
"Amen," three sailors chant.
The discharged men and the CFew cross themselves and look off at the waves. It is strange that a man should be sewn up in sailcloth and should soon be flying into the sea. Is it possible that such a thing can happen to anyone?
The priest strews earth upon Gusev and makes obei- sance to him. The men sing "Memory Eternal."
The seaman on watch duty raises the end of the plank, Gusev slides off it slowly and then flying, head foremost, turns over in the air and—plop! Foam covers him, and for a moment, he seems to be wrapped in lace, but the instant passes and he disappears in the waves.
He plunges rapidly downward. Will he reach the bot- tom? At this spot the ocean is said to be three miles deep. After sinking sixty or seventy feet, he begins to descend more and more slowly, swaying rhythmically as though in hesitation, and, carried along by the current, moves faster laterally than vertically.
And now he runs into a school of fish called pilot fish. Seeing the dark body, the little fish stop as though petri- fied and suddenly all turn round together and disappear. In less than a minute they rush back at Gusev, swift as arrows and begin zigzagging round him in the water. Then another dark body appears. It is a shark. With dignity and reluctance, seeming not to notice Gusev, as it were, it swims under him; then while he, moving downward, sinks upon its back, the shark turns, belly upward, basks in the warm transparent water and lan- guidly opens its jaws with two rows of teeth. The pilot fish are in ecstasy; they stop to see what will happen next. After playing a little with the body, the shark non- chalantly puts his jaws under it, cautiously touches it with his teeth and the sailcloth is ripped the full length of the body, from head to foot; one of the gridirons falls out, frightens the pilot fish and striking the shark on the flank, sinks rapidly to the bottom.