“Damned brute...” said Gusev angrily.

The two of them, he and the soldier, threaded their way to the head of the ship, then stood at the rail and looked up and down.  Overhead deep sky, bright stars, peace and stillness, exactly as at home in the village, below darkness and disorder.  The tall waves were resounding, no one could tell why.  Whichever wave you looked at each one was trying to rise higher than all the rest and to chase and crush the next one; after it a third as fierce and hideous flew noisily, with a glint of light on its white crest.

The sea has no sense and no pity.  If the steamer had been smaller and not made of thick iron, the waves would have crushed it to pieces without the slightest compunction, and would have devoured all the people in it with no distinction of saints or sinners.  The steamer had the same cruel and meaningless expression.  This monster with its huge beak was dashing onwards, cutting millions of waves in its path; it had no fear of the darkness nor the wind, nor of space, nor of solitude, caring for nothing, and if the ocean had its people, this monster would have crushed them, too, without distinction of saints or sinners.

“Where are we now?” asked Gusev.

“I don’t know.  We must be in the ocean.”

“There is no sight of land...”

“No indeed!  They say we shan’t see it for seven days.”

The two soldiers watched the white foam with the phosphorus light on it and were silent, thinking.  Gusev was the first to break the silence.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he said, “only one is full of dread as though one were sitting in a dark forest; but if, for instance, they let a boat down on to the water this minute and an officer ordered me to go a hundred miles over the sea to catch fish, I’d go.  Or, let’s say, if a Christian were to fall into the water this minute, I’d go in after him.  A German or a Chinaman I wouldn’t save, but I’d go in after a Christian.”

“And are you afraid to die?”

“Yes.  I am sorry for the folks at home.  My brother at home, you know, isn’t steady; he drinks, he beats his wife for nothing, he does not honour his parents.  Everything will go to ruin without me, and father and my old mother will be begging their bread, I shouldn’t wonder.  But my legs won’t bear me, brother, and it’s hot here.  Let’s go to sleep.”

V

Gusev went back to the ward and got into his hammock.  He was again tormented by a vague craving, and he could not make out what he wanted.  There was an oppression on his chest, a throbbing in his head, his mouth was so dry that it was difficult for him to move his tongue.  He dozed, and murmured in his sleep, and, worn out with nightmares, his cough, and the stifling heat, towards morning he fell into a sound sleep.  He dreamed that they were just taking the bread out of the oven in the barracks and he climbed into the stove and had a steam bath in it, lashing himself with a bunch of birch twigs.  He slept for two days, and at midday on the third two sailors came down and carried him out.