VIII.
All that day that Eliséy passed with the sick people, Efím waited for his companion. He walked but a short distance and sat down. He waited and waited, and fell asleep; when he awoke, he sat awhile,—but his companion did not turn up. He kept a sharp lookout for him, but the sun was going down behind a tree, and still Eliséy was not there.
"I wonder whether he has not passed by me," he thought. "Maybe somebody drove him past, and he did not see me while I was asleep. But how could he help seeing me? In the steppe you can see a long distance off. If I go back, he may be marching on, and we shall only get farther separated from each other. I will walk on,—we shall meet at the resting-place for the night."
When he came to a village, he asked the village officer to look out for an old man and bring him to the house where he stayed. Eliséy did not come there for the night. Efím marched on, and asked everybody whether they had seen a bald-headed old man. No one had seen him. Efím was surprised and walked on.
"We shall meet somewhere in Odessa," he thought, "or on the boat," and then he stopped thinking about it.
On the road he fell in with a pilgrim. The pilgrim, in calotte, cassock, and long hair, had been to Mount Athos, and was now going for the second time to Jerusalem. They met at a hostelry, and they had a chat and started off together.
They reached Odessa without any accident. They waited for three days for a ship. There were many pilgrims there, and they had come together from all directions. Again Efím asked about Eliséy, but nobody had seen him.
Efím provided himself with a passport,—that cost five roubles. He had forty roubles left for his round trip, and he bought bread and herring for the voyage. The ship was loaded, then the pilgrims were admitted, and Tarásych sat down beside the pilgrim he had met. The anchors were weighed, they pushed off from the shore, and the ship sailed across the sea.
During the day they had good sailing; in the evening a wind arose, rain fell, and the ship began to rock and to be washed by the waves. The people grew excited; the women began to shriek, and such men as were weak ran up and down the ship, trying to find a safe place. Efím, too, was frightened, but he did not show it: where he had sat down on the floor on boarding the ship by the side of Tambóv peasants, he sat through the night and the following day; all of them held on to their wallets and did not speak. On the third day it grew calmer. On the fifth day they landed at Constantinople.
Some of the pilgrims went ashore there, to visit the Cathedral of St. Sophia, which now the Turks hold; Tarásych did not go, but remained on board the ship. All he did was to buy some white bread. They remained there a day, and then again sailed through the sea. They stopped at Smyrna town, and at another city by the name of Alexandria, and safely reached the city of Jaffa. In Jaffa all pilgrims go ashore: from there it is seventy versts on foot to Jerusalem. At the landing the people had quite a scare: the ship was high, and the people were let down into boats below; but the boats were rocking all the time, and two people were let down past the boat and got a ducking, but otherwise all went safely.