“Panteley-ey!” someone shouted in the front. “A⁠ ⁠… a⁠ ⁠… va!”

“I can’t!” Panteley answered in a loud high voice. “A⁠ ⁠… a⁠ ⁠… va! Arya⁠ ⁠… a!”

There was an angry clap of thunder, which rolled across the sky from right to left, then back again, and died away near the foremost wagon.

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth,” whispered Yegorushka, crossing himself. “Fill heaven and earth with Thy glory.”

The blackness in the sky yawned wide and breathed white fire. At once there was another clap of thunder. It had scarcely ceased when there was a flash of lightning so broad that Yegorushka suddenly saw through a slit in the mat the whole high road to the very horizon, all the wagoners and even Kiruha’s waistcoat. The black shreds had by now moved upwards from the left, and one of them, a coarse, clumsy monster like a claw with fingers, stretched to the moon. Yegorushka made up his mind to shut his eyes tight, to pay no attention to it, and to wait till it was all over.

The rain was for some reason long in coming. Yegorushka peeped out from the mat in the hope that perhaps the storm-cloud was passing over. It was fearfully dark. Yegorushka could see neither Panteley, nor the bale of wool, nor himself; he looked sideways towards the place where the moon had lately been, but there was the same black darkness there as over the wagons. And in the darkness the flashes of lightning seemed more violent and blinding, so that they hurt his eyes.

“Panteley!” called Yegorushka.