Night was coming on. Stars glittered in the sky; on the hill towards the town the lights began to show. The prolonged wail of the steamers' whistles was heard from the river; the door of Vaviloff's vodka shop opened with a creaking noise, and a sound of cracking glass. Two dark figures entered the yard and approached the group of men seated round the vodka barrel, one of them asking in a hoarse voice—
"You are drinking?"
Whilst the other figure exclaimed in a low tone, envy and delight in his voice—
"What a set of lucky devils!"
Then over the head of the deacon a hand was stretched out and seized the bottle; and the peculiar gurgling sound was heard of vodka being poured from the bottle into a glass. Then someone coughed loudly.
"How dull you all are!" exclaimed the deacon. "Come, you one-eyed beggar, let's recall old times and have a song! Let us sing By the waters of Babylon."
"Does he know it?" asked Simtzoff.
"He? Why he was the soloist in the archbishop's choir. Come now, begin! By—the—waters—of—Babylon."
The voice of the deacon was wild, hoarse, and broken, whilst his friend sang with a whining falsetto. The doss-house, shrouded in darkness, seemed either to have grown larger or to have moved its half-rotten mass nearer towards these people, who with their wild howlings had aroused its dull echoes. A thick, heavy cloud slowly moved across the sky over the house. One of the outcasts was already snoring; the rest, not yet quite drunk, were either eating or drinking, or talking in low voices with long pauses. All felt a strange sense of oppression after this unusually abundant feast of vodka and of food. For some reason or another it took longer than usual to arouse to-day the wild gaiety of the company, which generally came so easily when the dossers were engaged round the bottle.
"Stop your howling for a minute, you dogs!" said the captain to the singers, raising his head from the ground, and listening. "Someone is coming, in a carriage!"