Perfect silence reigned.  Not a sound, save the sighs of the seas; it seemed as though this silence was about to be suddenly broken by some frightful, furious explosion of sound that would shake the sea to its depths, tear apart the dark masses of clouds floating over the sky and bury under the waves all those black craft.  The clouds crawled over the sky as slowly and as wearily as before, but the sea gradually emerged from under them, and one might fancy, looking at the sky, that it was also a sea, but an angry sea overhanging a peaceful, sleeping one.  The clouds resembled waves whose gray crests touched the earth; they resembled abysses hollowed by the wind between the waves and nascent billows not yet covered with the green foam of fury.

Gavrilo was oppressed by this dark calm and beauty; he realized that he desired his master’s return.  But he did not come!  The time passed slowly, more slowly than crawled the clouds up in the sky. . .  And the length of time augmented the agony of the silence.  But just now behind the wall, the plashing of water was heard, then a rustling, and something like a whisper.  Gavrilo was half dead from fright.

“Hey, there!  Are you asleep?  Take this!  Softly!” said Tchelkache’s hoarse voice.

From the wall descended a solid, square, heavy object.  Gavrilo put it in the boat, then another one like it.  Across the wall stretched Tchelkache’s long figure.  The oars reappeared mysteriously, then Gavrilo’s bag fell at his feet and Tchelkache out of breath seated himself at the tiller.

Gavrilo looked at him with a timid and glad smile.

“Are you tired?” said he.

“A little, naturally, simpleton!  Row firm, with all your might.  You have a pretty profit, brother!  The affair is half done, now there only remains to pass unseen under the eyes of those devils, and then you’ll receive your money and fly to your Machka. . .  You have a Machka, say, little one?”

“N-no!”

Gavrilo did not spare himself; his breast worked like a bellows and his arms like steel springs.  The water foamed under the boat and the blue trail that followed in the wake of the stern had become wider.  Gavrilo was bathed in perspiration, but he continued to row with all his strength.  After twice experiencing the fright that he had on this night, he dreaded a repetition of it and had only one desire:  to finish this accursed task as soon as possible, regain the land, and flee from this man before he should be killed by him or imprisoned on account of his misdeeds.  He resolved not to speak to him, not to contradict him in anything, to execute all his commands and if he succeeded in freeing himself from him unmolested, to sing a Te Deum to Saint Nicholas.  An earnest prayer was on his lips.  But he controlled himself, puffed like a steamboat, and in silence cast furtive glances at Tchelkache.