In the pure light of dawn the sea slumbered softly, reflecting the pearly clouds. At the cape, the half-awakened fishermen were moving about arranging the nets in the boats.

This every-day work was executed rapidly and in silence. The grey mass of the nets seemed to crawl from the sand into the boats, where it lay heaped at the bottom.

Sereja, as usual bare-headed and scantily clothed, was in the bows, shouting directions about the work in a hoarse voice, that betrayed last night's over-indulgence in vodka. The wind played with his ragged clothing, and his unkempt hair.

"Vassili, where are the green oars?" cried some one.

Vassili, as gloomy as a late autumn day, was arranging the net in the boat, and Sereja was watching him from behind. He was licking his lips, which meant that he was thirsty, and wanted a drink.

"Have you got any vodka?" he asked.

"Yes," muttered Vassili.

"All right! then I shall stay on dry land."

"All aboard?" they called out from the cape.

"Shove her off!" ordered Sereja, as he got out of the boat "Off you go!... I stay behind. Look out there!... Full ahead into the open, so as not to tangle the net ... and tell it out carefully. Don't make any knots.... Go ahead!"

They pushed off the boat; the fishermen climbed in, and each taking an oar, raised them in the air, ready for the word of command.

"One!"

The oars struck the water together; the boat swept forward into the vast plane of glistening water.

"Two!" sang out the steersman.

And like the legs of an enormous tortoise the oars moved in the rowlocks.

"One!...' Two!..."

On the shore, at the dry end of the nets, there remained five men—Sereja, Vassili, and three others. One of the three stretched himself on the sand, and said—

"We might perhaps get a nap."

The two others followed his example, and three ragged bodies threw themselves down in a heap.

"Why did you not come Sunday?" Vassili asked Sereja, as he led him towards the hut.

"I couldn't come."

"You were drunk?"

"No, I was watching your son and his mother-in-law," said Sereja, unmoved.

"That's new sort of work for you," said Vassili, with a constrained smile. "After all, they are not children!"

"They are worse; one is a fool, and the other is mad."

"Is it Malva who is the mad one?" asked Vassili.

And his eyes shone with sad anger.

"That's it!"

"Since when?"

"She has always been mad. She has, brother Vassili, a soul which does not fit her body. Can you understand that?"

"It's not difficult to understand!... Her soul is vile."

Sereja glanced obliquely at him, and replied with an accent of contempt—

"Vile? Oh! you earth-grubbers!... you!... you understand nothing of life. All you want in a woman is great fat bosoms; her temperament does not matter to you in the least But it's in the temperament that one finds all the colour of a human being. A woman without temperament is like bread without salt Can you get any pleasure out of a balalaika without strings? You dog!"

"It's yesterday's wine that makes you talk so well!" Interjected Vassili.

He longed to know where and how Sereja had seen Malva and Jakoff the day before, but a feeling of shame prevented him from asking. In the hut he poured out a full glass of vodka for Sereja, in the hope that the fellow might get drunk and would himself tell him all, without waiting to be questioned. But Sereja drank, coughed, and, as if refreshed, sat down at the open door, stretching himself and yawning.

"Drinking is like swallowing fire," he said.

"At all events, you know how to drink!" replied Vassili, astonished with the rapidity with which Sereja had swallowed the vodka.

"Ah! yes," said the other, shaking his tawny head; he wiped his moustache with the back of his hand, and began talking in a confident, didactic tone—"I know how to drink, brother! I do everything short and quick, that's all about it!... Make no mistake, I go straight ahead!... It doesn't matter what happens!... If you start from the ground, you can only fall on the ground...."

"I thought you were going into the Caucasus?" questioned Vassili, who was trying carefully to work round towards his object.

"Yes, I shall go when I want to. When I have quite made up my mind.... Then I go straight ahead: one, two! and it's done.... Either I succeed, or else I come a cropper.... It's all as plain as a pikestaff."