"Come, friend, wake up! It's high time. Why, you look as if your soul had evaporated through your skin, and only a bag of bones remained. Dear friend, I say! We're pretty well at the end of this job, eh?"
It was pleasant to Gabriel, at any rate, to hear a human voice, even if the speaker were Chelkash.
"I hear," he said softly.
"Very well, thick-head. Come now, take the rudder, and I'll have a go at the oars. You seem tired. Come!"
Gabriel mechanically changed places. When Chelkash, in changing places with him, looked him in the face and observed that his tottering legs trembled beneath him, he was still sorrier for the lad. He patted him on the shoulder.
"Well, well, don't be frightened. You have worked right well. I'll richly reward you, my friend. What say you to a fiver, eh?"
"I want nothing. Put me ashore, that's all."
Chelkash waved his hand, spat a bit, and began rowing, flinging the oars far back with his long arms.
The sea was waking. It was playing with tiny billows, producing them, adorning them with a fringe of foam, bumping them together, and beating them into fine dust. The foam, in dissolving, hissed and spluttered—and everything around was full of a musical hubbub and splashing. The gloom seemed to have more life in it.
"Now, tell me," said Chelkash, "I suppose you'll be off to your village, marry, plough up the soil, and sow corn, your wife will bear you children, and there won't be food enough. Now, tell me, do you mean to go on working your heart out all your life long? Say! There's not very much fun in that now, is there?"