“The air’s suffocating, brother,” he said. “I’m going up on deck. Take me topsides, for Christ’s sake.”
“All right,” agreed the soldier with the sling. “You can’t do it alone. I’ll carry you. Put your arms round my neck.”
Gusev threw his arms round the soldier’s neck, and with his healthy arm the soldier supported him, and in this way he was carried on deck where the discharged soldiers and sailors lay sleeping side by side, so many of them that it was difficult to pass.
“Get down now,” the soldier with the sling said softly. “Follow me quietly, and hold on to my shirt.”
It was dark, there were no lights on deck, nor on the masts, nor anywhere in the sea around. On the prow the seaman on watch was standing perfectly still like a statue, and it seemed as though he, too, were asleep. The ship appeared to be abandoned to its own devices, going wherever it desired to go.
“They’ll throw Pavel Ivanich into the sea soon,” said the soldier with a sling. “In a sack and then into the water.”
“Yes, that’s the regulation.”
“It’s better to lie in the earth at home. That way your mother comes to the grave and weeps over you.”
“That’s true.”
There was a smell of dung and hay. There were oxen standing with drooping heads at the ship’s rail—one, two, three, eight of them altogether! There was a little pony, too. Gusev stretched forth his hand to caress it, but it shook its head, revealed its teeth, and tried to bite his sleeve.
“You bloody brute,” Gusev said angrily.
The two of them, Gusev and the soldier, made their way quietly to the ship’s prow, then they stood at the rail and silently gazed out to sea. The deep sky lay over them, the clear stars, stillness and peace, and it was exactly as it was in the village at home—while below them lurked darkness and chaos. Great waves were booming; no one knew why. Every wave, whichever one you looked at, was trying to climb over the rest, hurling itself on its neighbor, crushing it down; and then there would come a third wave with a glint of light on its white mane, as ferocious and hideous as all the others, with a full-throated roar.
The sea is senseless and pitiless. If the ship had been smaller, and not made of thick iron plates, the waves would have crushed it without the slightest remorse and devoured all the people, making no distinction between saints and sinners. The ship itself possessed the same cruel expression, devoid of any meaning. This beaked monster pressed forward, cutting a pathway through a million waves, fearing neither darkness nor winds, neither space nor solitude—all these were as nothing, and if the ocean had been populated, the monster would have crushed its inhabitants, making no distinction between saints and sinners.
“Where are we now?” asked Gusev.
“I don’t know. I suppose we are far out to sea.”
“You can’t see land?”
“None at all! They say we’ll see it in a week.”
The two soldiers stared at the white foam gleaming with phosphorescence and were silent, lost in thought. Gusev was the first to break the silence.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “Only it’s strange, like when you sit down in a dark forest, but if— supposing they lowered a boat on the water this moment and an officer ordered me to go to a place fifty miles away across the sea to catch fish, I’d go! Or supposing a Christian fell into the water this very moment, I’d jump in after him! I wouldn’t try to save a German or a Chinese, but I’d jump in after a Christian!”
“Are you afraid of dying?”
“Yes, I’m afraid. I’m full of sorrow for the farm. My brother at home, you know, there’s nothing sober about him—he’s a drunkard, beats his wife for no reason at all, and doesn’t honor his parents. Without me everything will go to ruin, and soon, I don’t wonder, my father and my old mother will be begging in the streets. But my legs won’t hold me up, brother, and it’s suffocating here. Let’s go to sleep!”
V
Gusev returned to the sick bay and lay in his hammock. Once again he was tormented with vague yearnings, and could not understand what he wanted. There was a weight on his chest, a throbbing in his head, his mouth was so dry it was difficult for him to move his tongue. He dozed off, talked wildly in his sleep, and toward morning, worn out with nightmares, coughing, and the suffocating heat, he fell into a heavy sleep. He dreamed they were just taking the bread out of the oven in the barracks, and he climbed into the oven and took a steam bath in it, lashing himself with a bunch of birch twigs. He slept for two days, and on the third day at noon two sailors came down and carried him out of the sick bay.
They sewed him up in a sailcloth and to make him heavier they put in two iron fire bars. Sewn up in the sailcloth, he looked like a carrot or a horse-radish: broad at the head and narrow at the feet.… Before sunset they brought him on deck and laid him on a plank. One end of the plank lay on the ship’s rail, the other on a box placed on a stool. Around him stood the ship’s company and the discharged soldiers, their heads bared.
“Blessed be the name of God,” the priest began, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be!”
“Amen!” three sailors chanted.
The ship’s company and the discharged soldiers crossed themselves and looked out to sea. Strange that a man should be sewn up in a sailcloth and then tossed into the waves. Was it possible that such a thing could happen to anyone?
The priest scattered earth over Gusev and bowed low. They sang “Eternal Memory.”
The seaman on watch tilted the end of the plank. At first Gusev slid down slowly, then he rushed head foremost into the sea, turning a somersault in the air, then splashing. The foam enclosed him, and for a brief moment he seemed to be wrapped in lace, but this moment passed and he disappeared under the waves.
He plunged rapidly to the bottom. Did he reach it? The sea, they say, is three miles deep at this point. Falling sixty or seventy feet, he started to fall more slowly, swaying rhythmically, as though hesitating, at the mercy of the currents, sliding sideways more quickly than he sank down.
