CHAPTER VII.
FATHER JOHN.
Stung by this news of the pilgrim-boat having sailed, and haunting, unquietly, the Pilgrim's Court in the upper town, I notice a good many sheepskin garbs, with wearers of the burnt and hungry sort you meet in all seasons on the Syrian roads. They are exceedingly devout, and even in their rags and filth they have a certain grace of aspect and of mien. A pious purpose seems to inform their gestures and their speech. Yon poor old man going home with his morsel of dried fish has the air of an Arab sheikh. These pilgrims, like myself, have been detained by storms; and a hope shoots up into my heart that as the monks must either send away all these thirsty souls unslaked, or lodge and feed them for several months, they may yet contrive to send a boat.
A very small monk, not five feet high, with girl-like hair and rippling beard, which parts and flows out wildly in the wind, is standing in the gateway of the Pilgrim's Court; and hardly knowing how it might be best to put the matter in my feeble Russ, I ask him in that tongue where a man should look for the Solovetsk boat.
"English?" inquires the girl-like monk.
"Yes, English," I reply, in some surprise; having never before seen a monk in Russia who could speak in any other tongue than Russ. "The boat," he adds, "has ceased to run, and is now at Solovetsk laid up in dock."
In dock! This dwarf must be a wag; for such a conjunction as monks and docks in a country where you find a quay like that of Solambola is, of course, a joke. "In dock!"
"Then have you a dock in the Holy Isle?"
"A dock—why not? The merchants of Archangel have no docks, you say? Well, that is true; but merchants are not monks. You see, the monks of Solovetsk labor while the merchants of Archangel trade. Slava Bogu! A good monk does his work; no shuffling, and no waste. In London you have docks?"
"Yes, many: but they were not built by monks."