TAMAN is the nastiest little hole of all the seaports of Russia. I was all but starved there, to say nothing of having a narrow escape of being drowned.

I arrived late at night by the post-car. The driver stopped the tired troika 21 at the gate of the only stone-built house that stood at the entrance to the town. The sentry, a Cossack from the Black Sea, hearing the jingle of the bell, cried out, sleepily, in his barbarous voice, “Who goes there?” An under-officer of Cossacks and a headborough 22 came out. I explained that I was an officer bound for the active-service detachment on Government business, and I proceeded to demand official quarters. The headborough conducted us round the town. Whatever hut we drove up to we found to be occupied. The weather was cold; I had not slept for three nights; I was tired out, and I began to lose my temper.

“Take me somewhere or other, you scoundrel!” I cried; “to the devil himself, so long as there’s a place to put up at!”

“There is one other lodging,” answered the headborough, scratching his head. “Only you won’t like it, sir. It is uncanny!”

Failing to grasp the exact signification of the last phrase, I ordered him to go on, and, after a lengthy peregrination through muddy byways, at the sides of which I could see nothing but old fences, we drove up to a small cabin, right on the shore of the sea.

The full moon was shining on the little reed-thatched roof and the white walls of my new dwelling. In the courtyard, which was surrounded by a wall of rubble-stone, there stood another miserable hovel, smaller and older than the first and all askew. The shore descended precipitously to the sea, almost from its very walls, and down below, with incessant murmur, plashed the dark-blue waves. The moon gazed softly upon the watery element, restless but obedient to it, and I was able by its light to distinguish two ships lying at some distance from the shore, their black rigging motionless and standing out, like cobwebs, against the pale line of the horizon.

“There are vessels in the harbour,” I said to myself. “To-morrow I will set out for Gelenjik.”

I had with me, in the capacity of soldier-servant, a Cossack of the frontier army. Ordering him to take down the portmanteau and dismiss the driver, I began to call the master of the house. No answer! I knocked—all was silent within!... What could it mean? At length a boy of about fourteen crept out from the hall.

“Where is the master?”

“There isn’t one.”

“What! No master?”

“None!”

“And the mistress?”

“She has gone off to the village.”

“Who will open the door for me, then?” I said, giving it a kick.

The door opened of its own accord, and a breath of moisture-laden air was wafted from the hut. I struck a lucifer match and held it to the boy’s face. It lit up two white eyes. He was totally blind, obviously so from birth. He stood stock-still before me, and I began to examine his features.

I confess that I have a violent prejudice against all blind, one-eyed, deaf, dumb, legless, armless, hunchbacked, and such-like people. I have observed that there is always a certain strange connection between a man’s exterior and his soul; as, if when the body loses a limb, the soul also loses some power of feeling.

And so I began to examine the blind boy’s face. But what could be read upon a face from which the eyes are missing?... For a long time I gazed at him with involuntary compassion, when suddenly a scarcely perceptible smile flitted over his thin lips, producing, I know not why, a most unpleasant impression upon me. I began to feel a suspicion that the blind boy was not so blind as he appeared to be. In vain I endeavoured to convince myself that it was impossible to counterfeit cataracts; and besides, what reason could there be for doing such a thing? But I could not help my suspicions. I am easily swayed by prejudice...

“You are the master’s son?” I asked at length.

“No.”

“Who are you, then?”

“An orphan—a poor boy.”

“Has the mistress any children?”

“No, her daughter ran away and crossed the sea with a Tartar.”

“What sort of a Tartar?”

“The devil only knows! A Crimean Tartar, a boatman from Kerch.”

I entered the hut. Its whole furniture consisted of two benches and a table, together with an enormous chest beside the stove. There was not a single ikon to be seen on the wall—a bad sign! The sea-wind burst in through the broken window-pane. I drew a wax candle-end from my portmanteau, lit it, and began to put my things out. My sabre and gun I placed in a corner, my pistols I laid on the table. I spread my felt cloak out on one bench, and the Cossack his on the other. In ten minutes the latter was snoring, but I could not go to sleep—the image of the boy with the white eyes kept hovering before me in the dark.

About an hour passed thus. The moon shone in at the window and its rays played along the earthen floor of the hut. Suddenly a shadow flitted across the bright strip of moonshine which intersected the floor. I raised myself up a little and glanced out of the window. Again somebody ran by it and disappeared—goodness knows where! It seemed impossible for anyone to descend the steep cliff overhanging the shore, but that was the only thing that could have happened. I rose, threw on my tunic, girded on a dagger, and with the utmost quietness went out of the hut. The blind boy was coming towards me. I hid by the fence, and he passed by me with a sure but cautious step. He was carrying a parcel under his arm. He turned towards the harbour and began to descend a steep and narrow path.

“On that day the dumb will cry out and the blind will see,” I said to myself, following him just close enough to keep him in sight.

Meanwhile the moon was becoming overcast by clouds and a mist had risen upon the sea. The lantern alight in the stern of a ship close at hand was scarcely visible through the mist, and by the shore there glimmered the foam of the waves, which every moment threatened to submerge it. Descending with difficulty, I stole along the steep declivity, and all at once I saw the blind boy come to a standstill and then turn down to the right. He walked so close to the water’s edge that it seemed as if the waves would straightway seize him and carry him off. But, judging by the confidence with which he stepped from rock to rock and avoided the water-channels, this was evidently not the first time that he had made that journey. Finally he stopped, as though listening for something, squatted down upon the ground, and laid the parcel beside him. Concealing myself behind a projecting rock on the shore, I kept watch on his movements. After a few minutes a white figure made its appearance from the opposite direction. It came up to the blind boy and sat down beside him. At times the wind wafted their conversation to me.

“Well?” said a woman’s voice. “The storm is violent; Yanko will not be here.”

“Yanko is not afraid of the storm!” the other replied.

“The mist is thickening,” rejoined the woman’s voice, sadness in its tone.

“In the mist it is all the easier to slip past the guardships,” was the answer.

“And if he is drowned?”

“Well, what then? On Sunday you won’t have a new ribbon to go to church in.”

An interval of silence followed. One thing, however, struck me—in talking to me the blind boy spoke in the Little Russian dialect, but now he was expressing himself in pure Russian.

“You see, I am right!” the blind boy went on, clapping his hands. “Yanko is not afraid of sea, nor winds, nor mist, nor coastguards! Just listen! That is not the water plashing, you can’t deceive me—it is his long oars.”

The woman sprang up and began anxiously to gaze into the distance.

“You are raving!” she said. “I cannot see anything.”

I confess that, much as I tried to make out in the distance something resembling a boat, my efforts were unsuccessful. About ten minutes passed thus, when a black speck appeared between the mountains of the waves! At one time it grew larger, at another smaller. Slowly rising upon the crests of the waves and swiftly descending from them, the boat drew near to the shore.

“He must be a brave sailor,” I thought, “to have determined to cross the twenty versts of strait on a night like this, and he must have had a weighty reason for doing so.”

Reflecting thus, I gazed with an involuntary beating of the heart at the poor boat. It dived like a duck, and then, with rapidly swinging oars—like wings—it sprang forth from the abyss amid the splashes of the foam. “Ah!” I thought, “it will be dashed against the shore with all its force and broken to pieces!” But it turned aside adroitly and leaped unharmed into a little creek. Out of it stepped a man of medium height, wearing a Tartar sheepskin cap. He waved his hand, and all three set to work to drag something out of the boat. The cargo was so large that, to this day, I cannot understand how it was that the boat did not sink.

Each of them shouldered a bundle, and they set off along the shore, and I soon lost sight of them. I had to return home; but I confess I was rendered uneasy by all these strange happenings, and I found it hard to await the morning.

My Cossack was very much astonished when, on waking up, he saw me fully dressed. I did not, however, tell him the reason. For some time I stood at the window, gazing admiringly at the blue sky all studded with wisps of cloud, and at the distant shore of the Crimea, stretching out in a lilac-coloured streak and ending in a cliff, on the summit of which the white tower of the lighthouse was gleaming. Then I betook myself to the fortress, Phanagoriya, in order to ascertain from the Commandant at what hour I should depart for Gelenjik.

But the Commandant, alas! could not give me any definite information. The vessels lying in the harbour were all either guard-ships or merchant-vessels which had not yet even begun to take in lading.

“Maybe in about three or four days’ time a mail-boat will come in,” said the Commandant, “and then we shall see.”

I returned home sulky and wrathful. My Cossack met me at the door with a frightened countenance.

“Things are looking bad, sir!” he said.

“Yes, my friend; goodness only knows when we shall get away!”

Hereupon he became still more uneasy, and, bending towards me, he said in a whisper:

“It is uncanny here! I met an under-officer from the Black Sea to-day—he’s an acquaintance of mine—he was in my detachment last year. When I told him where we were staying, he said, ‘That place is uncanny, old fellow; they’re wicked people there!’... And, indeed, what sort of a blind boy is that? He goes everywhere alone, to fetch water and to buy bread at the bazaar. It is evident they have become accustomed to that sort of thing here.”

“Well, what then? Tell me, though, has the mistress of the place put in an appearance?”

“During your absence to-day, an old woman and her daughter arrived.”

“What daughter? She has no daughter!”

“Goodness knows who it can be if it isn’t her daughter; but the old woman is sitting over there in the hut now.”

I entered the hovel. A blazing fire was burning in the stove, and they were cooking a dinner which struck me as being a rather luxurious one for poor people. To all my questions the old woman replied that she was deaf and could not hear me. There was nothing to be got out of her. I turned to the blind boy who was sitting in front of the stove, putting twigs into the fire.

“Now, then, you little blind devil,” I said, taking him by the ear. “Tell me, where were you roaming with the bundle last night, eh?”

The blind boy suddenly burst out weeping, shrieking and wailing.

“Where did I go? I did not go anywhere... With the bundle?... What bundle?”

This time the old woman heard, and she began to mutter:

“Hark at them plotting, and against a poor boy too! What are you touching him for? What has he done to you?”

I had enough of it, and went out, firmly resolved to find the key to the riddle.

I wrapped myself up in my felt cloak and, sitting down on a rock by the fence, gazed into the distance. Before me stretched the sea, agitated by the storm of the previous night, and its monotonous roar, like the murmur of a town over which slumber is beginning to creep, recalled bygone years to my mind, and transported my thoughts northward to our cold Capital. Agitated by my recollections, I became oblivious of my surroundings.

About an hour passed thus, perhaps even longer. Suddenly something resembling a song struck upon my ear. It was a song, and the voice was a woman’s, young and fresh—but, where was it coming from?... I listened; it was a harmonious melody—now long-drawnout and plaintive, now swift and lively. I looked around me—there was nobody to be seen. I listened again—the sounds seemed to be falling from the sky. I raised my eyes. On the roof of my cabin was standing a young girl in a striped dress and with her hair hanging loose—a regular water-nymph. Shading her eyes from the sun’s rays with the palm of her hand, she was gazing intently into the distance. At one time, she would laugh and talk to herself, at another, she would strike up her song anew.

I have retained that song in my memory, word for word:

     At their own free will

     They seem to wander

     O’er the green sea yonder,

     Those ships, as still

     They are onward going,

     With white sails flowing.

     And among those ships

     My eye can mark

     My own dear barque:

     By two oars guided

     (All unprovided

     With sails) it slips.

     The storm-wind raves:

 ............