They haul out the net, but it contains nothing except slime and a few small carp flopping in it. They have just cast the net once more as I reach that side.
The voice of the butler giving directions, the water dripping from the wet rope, and the sighs of dismay, alone break the silence. The wet rope stretches to the right wing, covers up more and more of the grass, slowly emerges farther and farther out of the water.
"Now pull all together, friends, once more!" cries the butler's voice. The net appears, dripping with water.
"There's something! it comes heavy, fellows," says some one's voice.
And here the wings with two or three carp flapping in them, wetting and crushing down the grass, are drawn to shore. And through the delicate strata of the agitated depths of the waters, something white gleams in the tightly stretched net. Not loud, but plainly audible amid the dead silence, a sigh of horror passes over the throng.
"Pull it up on the dry land! pull it up, friends!" says the butler's resolute voice; and the drowned man is pulled up across the mown burdocks and other weeds, to the shelter of the willows.
And here I see my good old auntie in her silk dress. I see her lilac sunshade with its fringe,—which somehow is incongruous with this picture of death terrible in its very simplicity,—and her face ready this moment to be convulsed with sobs. I realize the disappointment expressed on her face, because it is impossible to use the arnica; and I recall the sickening melancholy feeling that I have when she says with the simple egoism of love, "Come, my dear. Ah! how terrible this is! And here you always go in swimming by yourself."
I remember how bright and hot the sun shines on the dry ground, crumpling under the feet; how it gleams on the mirror of the pond; how the plump carp flap on the bank; how the schools of fish stir the smooth surface in the middle of the pond; how high in the air a hawk hangs, watching the ducklings which, quacking and spattering, swim through the reeds toward the centre; how the white tumulous thunder-clouds gather on the horizon; how the mud, brought up by the net, is scattered over the bank; and how, as I come to the dike, I again hear the blows of the clothes-pounders at work along the pond.
But the clothes-pounder has a ringing sound; two clothes-pounders, as it were, ring together, making a chord; and this sound torments, pains me, the more as I know that this clothes-pounder is a bell, and Feódor Filíppuitch does not cease to ring it. And this clothes-pounder, like an instrument of torture, squeezes my leg, which is freezing.—I fall into deep sleep.
I was waked by what seemed to me our very rapid progress, and by two voices speaking close to me.