condition amid which the soul turns to vacuity, and one no longer
thinks of oneself, but, on the contrary issues from one's personality,
and begins to see objects with unwonted clarity, and to hear sounds
with unwonted precision. Under my feet the seams in the blue-grey,
leaden ice lay full of water, while as for the ice itself, it was
blinding in its expansive glitter, even though in places it had come to
be either cracked or bulbous, or had ground itself into powder with its
own movement, or had become heaped into slushy hummocks of pumice-like
sponginess and the consistency of broken glass. And everywhere around
me I could discern the chilly, gaping smile of blue crevices which
caught at my feet, and rendered the tread of my boot-soles unstable.
And ever, as we marched, could the voices of Boev and the old soldier
be heard speaking in antiphony, like two pipes being fluted by one and
the same pair of lips.

"I won't be responsible," said the one voice.

"Nor I," responded the other.

"The only reason why I have come is that I was told to do so. That's
all about it."

"Yes, and the same with me."

"One man gives an order, and another man, perhaps a man a thousand
times more sensible than he, is forced to obey it."

"Is any man, in these days, sensible, seeing what a racket we have to
live among?"

By this time Ossip had tucked the skirts of his greatcoat into his
belt, while beneath those skirts his legs (clad in grey cloth gaiters
of a military pattern) were shuffling along as lightly and easily as
springs, and in a manner that suggested that there was turning and
twisting in front of him some person whom, though desirous of barring
to him the direct course, the shortest route, Ossip successfully
opposed and evaded by dint of dodges and deviations to right and left,
and occasional turns about, and the execution of dance steps and loops
and semicircles. Meanwhile in the tones of Ossip's voice there was a
soft, musical ring that struck agreeably upon the ear, and harmonised
to admiration with the song of the bells just when we were approaching
the middle of the river's breadth of four hundred sazheni. There
resounded over the surface of the ice a vicious rustle while a piece of
ice slid from under my feet. Stumbling, and powerless to retain my
footing, I blundered down upon my knees in helpless astonishment; and
then, as I glanced upstream, fear gripped at my throat, deprived me of
speech, and darkened all m