empty, deserted coffin. The waves beating against its sides awakened
heavy echoes therein, resembling long-drawn sighs. On the right,
stretched the damp wall of the quay, like a cold heavy serpent. Behind
were visible black skeletons, and in front, in the space between the
wall and the coffin, was the sea, silent and deserted, with black
clouds hanging over it. These clouds were slowly advancing, their
enormous, heavy masses, terrifying in the darkness, ready to crush man
with their weight. All was cold, black and of evil omen. Gavrilo was
afraid. This fear was greater than that imposed on him by Tchelkache;
it clasped Gavrilo's breast in a tight embrace, squeezed him to a
helpless mass and riveted him to the boat's bench.

Perfect silence reigned. Not a sound, save the sighs of the seas; it
seemed as though this silence was about to be suddenly broken by some
frightful, furious explosion of sound that would shake the sea to its
depths, tear apart the dark masses of clouds floating over the sky and
bury under the waves all those black craft. The clouds crawled over
the sky as slowly and as wearily as before, but the sea gradually
emerged from under them, and one might fancy, looking at the sky, that
it was also a sea, but an angry sea overhanging a peaceful, sleeping
one. The clouds resembled waves whose gray crests touched the earth;
they resembled abysses hollowed by the wind between the waves and
nascent billows not yet covered with the green foam of fury.

Gavrilo was oppressed by this dark calm and beauty; he realized that he
desired his master's return. But he did not come! The time passed
slowly, more slowly than crawled the clouds up in the sky. . . And the
length of time augmented the agony of the silence. But just now behind
the wall, the plashing of water was heard, then a rustling, and
something like a whisper. Gavrilo was half dead from fright.