“We’d get through as if we were behind a curtain.”

On the right and left eerie structures loomed out of the black water—barges, motionless, gloomy, and also black. But on one of them a light was moving; evidently somebody carrying a lantern was walking on the deck. The sea sounded plaintive and hollow, as it lapped against the sides of the barges, and the barges answered with a cold, muffled echo, as if arguing with the sea and refusing to yield to its plaint.

“A cordon!” exclaimed Chelkash in a scarcely audible whisper.

The moment Chelkash told him to row more slowly, Gavrila was again overcome by that feeling of tense expectation. He bent forward and peered into the darkness, and he felt as if he were growing, as if his bones and sinews were stretching within him, giving him a dull pain; his head, filled with but one thought, ached; the skin on his back quivered, and small, sharp, cold needles were shooting through his legs. His eyes ached from the tenseness with which he peered into the darkness, out of which, every moment, he expected to hear the cry: “Stop, thief!”

And now, when Chelkash whispered “cordon,” Gavrila shuddered; a piercing, burning thought shot through his brain and sent his taut nerves tingling. He wanted to shout and call for help. . . . He opened his mouth, rose slightly from the seat, stuck out his chest and took a deep breath—but suddenly he was paralysed by fear, which struck him like a whip. He closed his eyes and collapsed in the bottom of the boat.

Ahead of the boat, far away on the horizon, out of the black water, an enormous, fiery-blue sword rose and cleaved the darkness of the night; it ran its edge over the clouds and then lay on the breast of the sea, a broad blue strip. And within this bright strip ships appeared out of the darkness, ships hitherto invisible, black, silent, and shrouded in the solemn gloom of the night. They looked as though they had long been at the bottom of the sea, sent there by the mighty power of the storm, and had now risen at the command of the fiery sword that was born of the sea—had risen to look at the sky and at everything that was on the water.... Their rigging, clinging to their masts like festoons of seaweed brought up from the sea bottom together with the black giants who were enmeshed in their net. The sinister blue sword rose again out of the depth of the sea, and flashing, again cleaved the night, and again lay flat on the water, but in another direction. And where it lay, other ships’ hulls, hitherto invisible, appeared.

The boat stopped and rocked on the water as if in perplexity. Gavrila lay in the bottom of the boat, his face covered with his hands. Chelkash jabbed at him with his foot and hissed furiously:

“That’s the Customs cruiser, you fool.... It’s an electric lamp! Get up, you dolt! They’ll shine the light on us in a minute and everything will be all up with you and me! Get up!”

At last a kick from the heel of a heavy top boot heavier than the first caught Gavrila in the back. He started up, and still afraid to open his eyes, took his seat, groped for the oars and began to row.

“Quieter! Quieter, or I’ll murder you! ... What a dolt you are, the devil take you! What frightened you, ugly mug? A lantern, that’s all it is! Quieter with the oars ... you sour-faced devil! ... They’re on the lookout for smugglers. They won’t see us—they’re too far out. Don’t be afraid, they won’t see us. Now we....” Chelkash looked round triumphantly. “Of course! We’re out of it! Phew! ... Well, you’re lucky, you thick-headed boob!”

Gavrila said nothing. He pulled at the oars and, breathing heavily, looked out of the corners of his eyes in the direction where the fiery sword was rising and falling. He could not possibly believe what Chelkash said—that this was only a lantern.