Anton Chekhov

“ Alexey is tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden—she is well wrapped up.
"The children will catch cold ..." thought Goussiev. " od grant them," he whispered, "a pure right mind that they may honour their parents and be better than their father and mother . . . ."
"The boots want soling," cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. "Aye, aye."
The thread of Goussiev's thoughts was broken, and instead of the pond, suddenly—without rhyme or reason—he saw a large bull's head without eyes, and the horse and sledge did not move on, but went round and round in a black mist. ”

“ Goussiev was the first to break the silence.
"Nothing is really horrible," he said. "You feel uneasy, as if you were in a dark forest. Suppose a boat were lowered and I was ordered to go a hundred miles out to sea to fish—I would go. ”

“ Pavel Ivanich got tired with talking, and his breath failed him, but he went on :
"Yes. I always tell the truth straight out. . . I am afraid of nobody and nothing. There's a great difference between myself and you in that respect. You are dull, blind, stupid, you see nothing, and you don't understand what you do see. You are told that the wind breaks its chain, that you are brutes and worse, and you believe ; you are thrashed and you kiss the hand that thrashes you ”

“ You can always tell when a man is going to die soon. You neither eat nor drink, and you have gone very thin and awful to look at. Consumption. That's what it is. I'm not saying this to make you uneasy, but because I thought you might like to have the last sacrament. And if you have any money, you had better give it to the senior officer."
"I have not written home," said Goussiev. "I shall die and they will never know."
"They will know," said the sailor in his deep voice. ”

“ He thought for a moment and then he said :
"Goussiev, do you know how I swindled them?"
"Who, Pavel Ivanich? "
"The lot out there. . . You see there's only first and third class on the steamer, and only peasants are allowed to go third. If you have a decent suit, and look like a nobleman or a bourgeois, at a distance, then you must go first. It may break you, but you have to lay down your five hundred roubles. ”

“ I live consciously. I see everything, as an eagle or a hawk sees when it hovers over the earth, and I understand everything. I am a living protest. I see injustice—I protest ; I see bigotry and hypocrisy—I protest ”

“ II At first through the darkness there appeared only a blue circle, the port-hole, then Goussiev began slowly to distinguish the man in the next hammock, Pavel Ivanich. He was sleeping in a sitting position, for if he lay down he could not breathe. His face was grey ; his nose long and sharp, and his eyes were huge, be cause he was so thin ; his temples were sunk, his beard scanty, the hair on his head long. . . By his face it was impossible to tell his class : gentleman, merchant, or peasant ”

“ If they are not chained, what happens to them when it is calm ?
Goussiev thought for a long time of a fish as big as a mountain, and of thick rusty chains; then he got tired of that and began to think of his native place whither he was returning after five years' service in the Far East. He saw with his mind's eye the great pond covered with snow . . . On one side of the pond was a brick-built pottery, with a tall chimney belching clouds of black smoke, and on the other side was the village. . . From the yard of the fifth house from the corner came his brother Alexey in a sledge ”

“ They only need to lack con science and humanity, and to deceive the owners of the steamer. We needn't worry about the first, they are experts by nature; but the second needs a certain amount of practice. In a crowd of four hundred healthy soldiers and sailors five sick men are never noticed; so you were carried up to the steamer, mixed with a healthy lot who were counted in such a hurry that nothing wrong was noticed, and when the steamer got away they saw fever-stricken and consumptive men lying helpless on the deck. . . ."
Goussiev could not make out what Paul Ivanich was talking about ”

“ The three patients—two soldiers and a sailor—who had played cards all day were now asleep and tossing to and fro.
The vessel began to shake. The hammock under Goussiev slowly heaved up and down, as though it were breathing one, two, three .... Something crashed on the floor and began to tinkle: the jug must have fallen down.
"The wind has broken loose ..." said Goussiev, listening attentively.
This time Pavel Ivanich coughed and answered irritably :
"You spoke just now of a ship colliding with a large fish, and now you talk of the wind breaking loose. . . Is the wind a dog to break loose? ”

“ You should keep a head on your shoulders and think. Silly idiot!"
Pavel Ivanich was subject to seasickness. When the ship rolled he would get very cross, and the least trifle would upset him, though Goussiev could never see anything to be cross about. What was there unusual in his story about the fish or in his saying that the wind had broken loose? Suppose the fish were as big as a mountain and its back were as hard as a sturgeon's, and suppose that at the end of the wood there were huge stone walls with the snarling winds chained up to them ... ”