“Pavel Ivanitch,” Gusev called to him.  “Hey, Pavel Ivanitch.”

Pavel Ivanitch opened his eyes and moved his lips.

“Are you feeling bad?”

“No... it’s nothing...” answered Pavel Ivanitch, gasping.  “Nothing; on the contrary—­I am rather better....  You see I can lie down.  I am a little easier....”

“Well, thank God for that, Pavel Ivanitch.”

“When I compare myself with you I am sorry for you... poor fellow.  My lungs are all right, it is only a stomach cough....  I can stand hell, let alone the Red Sea.  Besides I take a critical attitude to my illness and to the medicines they give me for it.  While you... you are in darkness....  It’s hard for you, very, very hard!”

The ship was not rolling, it was calm, but as hot and stifling as a bath-house; it was not only hard to speak but even hard to listen.  Gusev hugged his knees, laid his head on them and thought of his home.  Good heavens, what a relief it was to think of snow and cold in that stifling heat!  You drive in a sledge, all at once the horses take fright at something and bolt....  Regardless of the road, the ditches, the ravines, they dash like mad things, right through the village, over the pond by the pottery works, out across the open fields.  “Hold on,” the pottery hands and the peasants sho ut, meeting them.  “Hold on.”  But why?  Let the keen, cold wind beat in one’s face and bite one’s hands; let the lumps of snow, kicked up by the horses’ hoofs, fall on one’s cap, on one’s back, down one’s collar, on one’s chest; let the runners ring on the snow, and the traces and the sledge be smashed, deuce take them one and all!  And how delightful when the sledge upsets and you go flying full tilt into a drift, face downwards in the snow, and then you get up white all over with icicles on your moustaches; no cap, no gloves, your belt undone....  People laugh, the dogs bark....

Pavel Ivanitch half opened one eye, looked at Gusev with it, and asked softly: 

“Gusev, did your commanding officer steal?”

“Who can tell, Pavel Ivanitch!  We can’t say, it didn’t reach us.”

And after that a long time passed in silence.  Gusev brooded, muttered something in delirium, and kept drinking water; it was hard for him to talk and hard to listen, and he was afraid of being talked to.  An hour passed, a second, a third; evening came on, then night, but he did not notice it.  He still sat dreaming of the frost.

There was a sound as though someone came into the hospital, and voices were audible, but a few minutes passed and all was still again.

“The Kingdom of Heaven and eternal peace,” said the soldier with his arm in a sling.  “He was an uncomfortable man.”

“What?” asked Gusev.  “Who?”

“He is dead, they have just carried him up.”

“Oh, well,” muttered Gusev, yawning, “the Kingdom of Heaven be his.”

“What do you think?” the soldier with his arm in a sling asked Gusev.  “Will he be in the Kingdom of Heaven or not?”