Chapter 154: Gusev

Gusev I It was getting dark; it would soon be night. Gusev, a discharged soldier, sat up in his hammock and said in an undertone: “I say, Pavel Ivanitch. A soldier at Sutchan told me: while they were sailing a big fish came into collision with their ship and stove a hole in it.” The nondescript individual whom he was addressing, and whom everyone in the ship’s hospital called Pavel Ivanitch, was silent, as though he had not heard. And again a stillness followed … The wi…