You choose the nearest, step across the half-decayed carcass of a bay horse that lies in the mud beside the boat, and take your place at the rudder. The boat pulls off from the shore. Around you is the sea, now already glittering in the morning sun; before you, rowing steadily and silently, are the old sailor in a camel’s-hair coat, and a flaxen-haired boy. You look at the huge bulk of the striped ships, scattered far and near over the Roadstead; at the ships’ boats, like black dots moving over the glittering azure; and, in another direction, at the handsome light-coloured buildings of the town, lit up by the rosy rays of the morning sun; and, again, at the frothy white outline of the breakwater, at the foam above the sunken ships, the ends of whose black masts sadly project here and there; at the enemy’s fleet swaying on the crystal horizon of the sea, and at the salt bubbles dancing on the eddying wash made by the oars. You listen to the steady murmur of voices which reaches you across the water, and to the majestic sounds of the firing which, it seems to you, now grows stronger in Sevastopol.
Some feeling of courage or pride surely enters your soul, and the blood flows faster in your veins, at the thought that you, too, are in Sevastopol.
“Your honour, you’re steering straight into the Constantine ,” says the old seaman, who has turned to see where you are steering.
“All her cannons are still on board,” says the boy, examining the ship as he rows past her.
“Well, of course; she’s a new ship. Kornílof himself lived on her,” remarks the old seaman, also looking at her.
“Look where it has burst!” says the boy, after a long silence, watching a small white cloud of spreading smoke, which has suddenly appeared high above the South Bay, accompanied by the sharp report of an exploding bomb.