it, eating
rice with little sticks.

Languidly the water heaved, languidly the white seagulls floated over
it.

"I should like to give that fat fellow one in the neck," thought Gusev,
gazing at the stout Chinaman, with a yawn.

He dozed off, and it seemed to him that all nature was dozing, too.
Time flew swiftly by; imperceptibly the day passed, imperceptibly the
darkness came on.... The steamer was no longer standing still, but
moving on further.

IV

Two days passed, Pavel Ivanitch lay down instead of sitting up; his eyes
were closed, his nose seemed to have grown sharper.

"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 Ivanit