Mons perceived at a distance, opposite to the Peter and Paul fortress, a number of rowing galleys and boyers; he took up a long pole, one of those used for scaring pigeons, fixed Nastenka’s red silk neckerchief to it, pushed it through the window and began to wave, making signs to attract attention. One of the boats left the rest and coming straight across the Neva, approached the Assembly Room pavilion.
Peter had worked without a break all the night through, rescuing people from water and flames like a common fireman; his hair was singed; he narrowly escaped being crushed by a beam; while helping to rescue the chattels of poor people, who lived in cellar dwellings, he stood up to his waist in water and was chilled to the bone; he suffered with all and cheered all; wherever the Tsar appeared the work was done so heartily that both water and flames receded. The Tsarevitch was in a boat with his father, but whenever he ventured to offer help, Peter refused as if in disdain.
When the fire was quenched and the water began to subside the Tsar remembered it was time to go home to his wife, who had probably spent the night in great anxiety about her husband. On his way back he could not resist the desire to go round by the Summer Garden, and see what damage the flood had done there.
The pavilion projecting over the Neva was partially ruined, but the statue of Venus had remained whole. The pedestal was submerged, so that the Goddess, the Foam-born, seemed to be again rising from the waves; not the blue, tender waves of old, but the lurid, dark, waves, heavy as though leaden, of the Styx.
At the foot of the statue a black speck was visible. Peter looked through the telescope and found it was a man. By order of the Tsar a sentinel watched night and day at this precious statue. Caught by the waters, not daring to leave his post, he had climbed up the pedestal of Venus and huddled himself close to her feet, embracing them; and thus he had probably spent the whole night, starved with cold, half dead with fatigue.
The Tsar hastened to his rescue. Standing at the rudder, he steered the boyer against current and wind. Suddenly an enormous wave seized the side of the boat, swept over them showering them with spray and making the craft heel over to such an extent that it threatened to capsize. But Peter was an experienced helmsman. Setting his feet against the stern, leaning with all his weight on the rudder, he overcame the danger, and steered steadily towards his goal.
The Tsarevitch glanced at his father and suddenly, for some reason or other, he remembered what his teacher Viasemski had once told him when drunk:—
“Theodosius is wont to sing with the choristers before your father: where God wills it the order of nature is conquered, and such like psalm verses. They sing them to flatter your father, and he rejoices to be compared unto God; forgetting that not only God but the devil also has power over the elements; there are such things as demon miracles.”
Clad in a plain sailor’s jacket, with high leather boots and waving hair—his hat had been carried off by the wind—the gigantic helmsman looked at the flooded city, his face, calm and firm, like sculptured stone, expressed neither confusion, fear, nor pity. There was something superhuman in this man. Like fate he held in his power men and elements. Men would bow before him, the wind would abate, the water would subside, and again the city would stand where he ordained it should be. “The order of nature is conquered, when he wills it.”
“Whose will,” the Tsarevitch asked himself, not daring to reply, “God’s, or the devil’s?”