Through Russia Part 26

"Good!"

With a wave of his black hand the stoker resumed his way, while the boatswain, yawning, fell to casting his eyes about him. On a locker near the companion of the engine-room a small man in a buff pea-jacket, a new cap, and a pair of boots on which there were clots of dried mud, was seated.

Through lack of diversion the boatswain began to feel inclined to hector somebody, so cried sternly to the man in question:

"Hi there, chawbacon!"

The man on the locker turned about--turned nervously, and much as a bullock turns. That is to say, he turned with his whole body.

"Why have you gone and put yourself THERE?" inquired the boatswain.

"Though there is a notice to tell you NOT to sit there, it is there that you must go and sit! Can't you read?"

Rising, the pa.s.senger inspected not the notice, but the locker. Then he replied:

"Read? Yes, I CAN read."

"Then why sit there where you oughtn't to?"

"I cannot see any notice."

"Well, it's hot there anyway, and the smell of oil comes up from the engines.... Whence have you come?"

"From Kashira."

"Long from home?"

"Three weeks, about."

"Any rain at your place?"

"No. But why?"

"How come your boots are so muddy?"

The pa.s.senger lowered his head, extended cautiously first one foot, and then the other, scrutinised them both, and replied:

"You see, they are not my boots."

With a roar of laughter that caused his brilliant beard to project from his chin, the boatswain retorted:

"I think you must drink a bit."

The pa.s.senger said nothing more, but retreated quietly, and with short strides, to the stem. From the fact that the sleeves of his pea-jacket reached far below his wrists, it was clear that the garment had originated from the shoulders of another man.

As for the boatswain, on noting the circ.u.mspection and diffidence with which the pa.s.senger walked, he frowned, sucked at his beard, approached a sailor who was engaged in vigorously scrubbing the bra.s.s on the door of the captain's cabin with a naked palm, and said in an undertone:

"Did you happen to notice the gait of that little man there in the light pea-jacket and dirty boots?"

"I did."

"Then see here. Do keep an eye upon him."

"But why? Is he a bad lot?"

"Something like it, I think."

"I will then."

At a table near the hatchway of the first-cla.s.s cabin, a fat man in grey was drinking beer. Already he had reached a state of moderate fuddlement, for his eyes were protruding sightlessly and staring unwinkingly at the opposite wall. Meanwhile, a number of flies were swarming in the sticky puddles on the table, or else crawling over his greyish beard and the brick-red skin of his motionless features.

The boatswain winked in his direction, and remarked:

"Half-seas over, HE is."

"'Tis his way," a pockmarked, eyebrow-less sailor responded.

Here the drunken man sneezed: with the result that a cloud of flies were blown over the table. Looking at them, and sighing as his companion had done, the boatswain thoughtfully observed:

"Why, he regularly sneezes flies, eh?"

The resting-place which I myself had selected was a stack of firewood over the stokehole shoot; and as I lay upon it I could see the hills gradually darkening the water with a mourning veil as calmly they advanced to meet the steamer; while in the meadows, a last lingering glow of the sunset's radiance was reddening the stems of the birches, and making the newly mended roof of a hut look as though it were cased in red fustian--communicating to everything else in the vicinity a semblance of floating amid fire--and effacing all outline, and causing the scene as a whole to dissolve into streaks of red and orange and blue, save where, on a hill above the hut, a black grove of firs stood thrown into tense, keen, and clear-cut relief.

Under a hill a party of fishermen had lit a wood fire, the flames of which could be seen playing upon, and picking out, the white hull of a boat--the dark figure of a man therein, a fishing net suspended from some stakes, and a woman in a yellow bodice who was sitting beside the fire. Also, amid the golden radiance there could be distinguished a quivering of the leaves on the lower branches of the tree whereunder the woman sat shaded.

All the river was calm, and not a sound occurred to break the stillness ash.o.r.e, while the air under the awning of the third-cla.s.s portion of the vessel felt as stifling as during the earlier part of the day. By this time the conversation of the pa.s.sengers, damped by the shadow of dusk, had merged into a single sound which resembled the humming of bees; and amid it one could not distinguish nor divine who was speaking, nor the subject of discussion, since every word therein seemed disconnected, even though all appeared to be talking amicably, and in order, concerning a common topic. At one moment a suppressed laugh from a young woman would reach the ear; in the cabin, a party who had agreed to sing a song of general acceptation were failing to hit upon one, and disputing the point in low and dispa.s.sionate accents; and in each, such sound there was something vespertinal, gently sad, softly prayer-like.

From behind the firewood near me a thick, rasping voice said in deliberate tones:

"At first he was a useful young fellow enough, and clean and spruce; but lately, he has become shabby and dirty, and is going to the dogs."

Another voice, loud and gruff, replied:

"Aha! Avoid the ladies, or one is bound to go amiss."

"The saying has it that always a fish makes for deeper water."

"Besides, he is a fool, and that is worse still. By the way, he is a relative of yours, isn't he?"

"Yes. He is my brother."

"Indeed? Then pray forgive me."

"Certainly; but, to speak plainly, he is a fool."

At this moment I saw the pa.s.senger in the buff pea-jacket approach the sally-port, grasp with his left hand a stanchion, and step on to the grating under which one of the paddle-wheels was churning the water to foam. There he stood looking over the bulwarks with a swinging motion akin to that of a bat when, grappling some object or another with its wings, it hangs suspended in the air. The fact that the man's cap was drawn tightly over his ears caused the latter to stick out almost to the point of absurdity.