Now, as I gazed at the sea, I remembered the time, not so long ago, when we were still at school. I remembered my friend, Galya; and the line about love being 'boundless as the sea' took me back to our far-off town.
Another thing that disappointed me was that the sea here was not boundless by any means. On the left it was bounded by a narrow spit of sand curving to the south-west. At the end of the spit, straight ahead of us, there were some buildings, and farther out stood a sort of pyramid rising quite high out of the water, probably a lighthouse.
The harbour gates to our right were protected by a grey stone breakwater. It seemed to run out of the harbour mole and, from where we were, looked very low, though it must have been quite high really. Only now and then did a wave foam over the massive stone slabs, and these were waves from the open sea, even fiercer than those that thundered on the shore below us.
Buffeted by the damp sea wind and salty spray, deafened by the roar of the waves, we did not hear a girl come up behind us.
We only saw her when she took a running jump on to the wall. The wind wrapped the hem of her blue, white-flowered dressing-gown tightly round her legs. On her feet she wore little pink beach-shoes.
We stared at the stranger.
Taking no notice of us, she stood on the concrete parapet, slim and supple, taking in deep breaths of the stormy air. After a little, she turned and, surveying us keenly, asked loudly:
'Will you be staying here for a while, boys?'
'Yes, just for a bit,' Sasha replied awkwardly.
'In that case, do you mind looking after my things for me, please!' And without waiting for a reply, the girl took a jewelled tortoise-shell comb out of her thick hair, thrust it into her dressing-gown pocket, and dropped the dressing-gown on the top of the wall, just in front of Sasha.
Now wearing only a bathing costume, the girl put her foot on the steps and started to go down.
We thought the girl would just take a dip in the surf at the bottom of the wall then run back shivering with cold. That was how most of the women bathed back home, in the Smotrich. But this girl plunged headlong into an oncoming wave, as if she had been doing it all her life. In a minute or two we saw the unknown girl far out at sea. Now her yellow costume showed above the waves, now it disappeared altogether. Instead of turning away from the advancing waves, the girl thrust into them headfirst. Huge walls of water towered over her, but she plunged boldly under them, only coming up again for a second to take breath before meeting another attack of the pounding sea. Now and then she turned towards us and languidly swept the hair back from her face. It was thick and wet and kept getting in her eyes.
'Gosh, a real circus princess!' Sasha exclaimed delightedly. 'The way she dives into those waves! ... Could you do that, Petka?' And Sasha sat down on the top of the wall beside the girl's dressing-gown, his eyes fixed on the sea.
'I'd have to find out what the water was like first,' Petka replied evasively: 'If it's really salty, why not! They say it's easy to swim in salt water; it holds you up.'
'It may hold you up, but look at the waves! Can't you see them?' I-said. 'If a wave like that hit you, you'd go to the bottom like a stone... How will she get out, I wonder?'
'She'll have a hard time getting to the shore!' Sasha agreed.
'Where is she, chaps?' Petka shouted suddenly. 'I can't see her.'
The girl seemed to have vanished.
'Perhaps she's on the breakwater already,' Sasha said dubiously.
'She couldn't have got there so soon,' I said, then heaved a sigh of relief: 'There she is, you asses!'
Gripping the anchor chain of the fishing smack, the unknown girl was climbing aboard. A wave threw her up and with a final pull she jumped on to the heaving deck. Clinging to the mast with one hand, she straightened her hair with the other, then, like a cabman out in a sharp frost, started flapping her arms round her body. She seemed to be enjoying her rest out there. But now I began to take a less favourable view of her bathing. She had asked us to look after her clothes for a bit, and now, by the look of things she would be swimming right out to the breakwater!
'You're an ass, you know, Sasha!' I said to Bobir. 'What made you say we'd stay here! There she is out there, enjoying herself, and we ought to be at the factory. A fine volunteer!. . .'
'All right, then, let's go,' Sasha suggested glancing round.
'If we go now, someone may pinch her dressing-gown and she'll think it was us,' Petka remarked thoughtfully.
'Come on, Petka, let's go and leave this ladies' man to stand guard!' I threatened Sasha
'I'm not staying here alone. Catch me!' Sasha grunted and hastily moved away from the dressing-gown.
As if sensing our impatience, the girl dived neatly off the smack into the foaming sea. Re-appearing on the crest of a wave, she struck out firmly for the shore. The sea helped her on, pushing her from behind. But near the shore the girl was caught in the backwash of the waves. The foaming rubbish-strewn water rolling back from the foot of the wall swept her to and fro without letting her get any nearer. The girl looked tired. She was swimming slowly to recover her strength.
But just at that moment a huge breaker came roaring towards the beach. As it swept her forward, the girl made a grab for the iron steps, which nearly gave way under the force of the wave.
Somehow the girl climbed up on to the sea wall. She swayed on her feet. Her hair was stuck together and hung down like wet rope. Specks of dirt marked her sunburnt legs.
'Merci for looking after my things,' she said breathlessly.
And catching up her dressing-gown she darted away, leaving little wet foot-marks on the concrete.
'Let's go, chaps,' I said, turning away from the wall.
When saying good-bye to us, Volodya had pointed out a tall brick chimney rising at the foot of a distant hill with a red flag flying from the lightning conductor.
'That's the Lieutenant Schmidt Works,' he said. 'Keep on towards that chimney and you'll come straight to the office.'
The town was very clean and surprisingly flat, not a bit like our home town with its steep cliffs and gullies.
'Pretty good swimmer, that princess, chaps,' said Sasha with envy in his voice. 'I wouldn't have gone into the sea in a storm like that. I can still hear it roaring in my ears.'
'That's just because you're not used to it,' said Petka. 'Wait until we get fixed up here. We'll be bathing all the summer. This storm's nothing to the ones we'll be swimming in. One day we'll be swimming out to that lighthouse!'
'Some hopes!' I- said. 'It's a good ten versts away.'
'But I'm glad we've got a place right by the sea, aren't you!' Petka said, finding it hard to keep up with us. 'Think how fine it'll be in the morning. Just run down to the beach and straight into the sea! Then off to work. We shan't even have to wash. Tiktor will be sorry he didn't come with us.'
'Don't count your chickens before they're hatched, Petka,' I said, remembering what the driver had told us about people without work in the town. ' 'Straight into the sea!' Mind you're not mistaken. We don't know yet how they'll greet us at the factory.'
'How do you think they'll greet us? What's wrong!' Sasha exclaimed. 'We've been sent there!'
'All this guessing's no good anyway!' I said. 'Let's ' walk faster!' And just then I caught myself thinking about that girl in the flowery dressing-gown.
Some pluck!
THE TEST
The smell of rough coal told us the factory was near. We knew that smell from our days in the foundry at school.
