"In England you have no monks; once you had them; and then they built things—eh?"
This dwarf is certainly a wag. What, monks who work, and docks in the Frozen Sea! After telling me where he learned his English (which is of nautical and naughty pattern), the manikin comforts me with news that although the pilgrim-boat has gone back to Solovetsk (where her engines are to be taken out, and put by in warm boxes near a stove for the winter months), a provision-boat may sail for the monastery in about a week.
"Can you tell me where to find the captain of that boat?"
"Hum!" says the dwarf, slowly, crossing himself the while, and lipping his silent prayer, "I am the skipper!"
My surprise is great. This dwarf, in a monk's gown and cap, with a woman's auburn curls, the captain of a sea-going ship! On a second glance at his slight figure, I notice that his eyes are bright, that his cheek is bronze, that his teeth, though small, are bony and well set. In spite of his serge gown and his girl-like face, there is about the tiny monk that look of mastery which becomes the captain of a ship.
"And can you give me a passage in your boat?"
"You! English, and you wish to see the holy tombs? Well, that is something new. No men of your nation ever sail to Solovetsk. They come over here to buy, and not to pray. Sometimes they come to fight."
The last five words, spoken in a low key, come out from between his teeth with a snap which is highly comic in a man so lowly and so small. A lady living at Onega told me some days ago that once, when she was staying for a week at Solovetsk with a Russian party, she was compelled to hide her English birth, from fear lest the monks should kill her. A woman's fancy, doubtless; but her words came back upon my mind with a very odd sort of start as the manikin knits his brow and hisses at the English fleet.
"Where is your boat, and what is she called?"
"She lies in the lower port, by the Pilgrim's Wharf; her name is the 'Vera;' as you would say, the 'Faith.'"