The ale-house was filled with a drunken uproar.  The red-haired sailor was asleep with his elbows on the table.

“Let us get out of here!” said Tchelkache rising.

Gavrilo tried to rise, but not succeeding, uttered a formidable oath and burst out into an idiotic, drunken laugh.

“See how fresh you are!” said Tchelkache, sitting down again.  Gavrilo continued to laugh, stupidly contemplating his master.  The other looked at him lucidly and penetratingly.  He saw before him a man whose life he held in his hands.  He knew that he had it in his power to do what he would with him.  He could bend him like a piece of cardboard, or help him to develop amid his staid, village environments.  Feeling himself the master and lord of another being, he enjoyed this thought and said to himself that this lad should never drink of the cup that destiny had made him, Tchelkache, empty.  He at once envied and pitied this young existence, derided it and was moved to compassion at the thought that it might again fall into hands like his own.  All these feelings were finally mingled in one—­paternal and authoritative.  He took Gavrilo by the arm, led and gently pushed him from the public house and deposited him in the shade of a pile of cut wood; he sat down beside him and lighted his pipe.  Gavrilo stirred a little, muttered something and went to sleep.

* * * * *

“Well, is it ready?” asked Tchelkache in a low voice to Gavrilo who was looking after the oars.

“In a moment! one of the thole-pins is loose; may I pound it down with an oar?”

“No, no!  No noise!  Push it down with your hands, it will be firm.”

They noiselessly cut loose the boat fastened to the bow of a sailing vessel.  There was here a whole fleet of sailing vessels, loaded with oak bark, and Turkish feluccas still half full of palma, sandal-wood and great cypress logs.

The night was dark; the sky was overspread with shreds of heavy clouds, and the sea was calm, black and thick as oil.  It exhaled a humid and salt aroma, and softly murmured as it beat against the sides of the vessels and the shore and gently rocked Tchelkache’s boat.  Far out at sea rose the black forms of ships; their sharp masts, surmounted with colored lanterns, were outlined against the sky.  The sea reflected the lights and appeared to be sown with yellow spots, which trembled upon its soft velvety black bosom, rising and falling regularly.  The sea was sleeping the healthy sound sleep of the laborer after his day’s work.

“We’re off!” said Gavrilo, dipping his oars.

“Let us pull!”

Tchelkache, with a strong stroke of the oar, drove the boat into an open space between two fishing-boats; he pulled rapidly over the shining water, which glowed, at the contact of the oars, with a blue phosphorescent fire.  A long trail of softly scintillating light followed the boat windingly.