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“Mate Ossip, what are we going to do?”

“What do you say?” Ossip queried absent-mindedly.

“I say, what are we going to do? Just to sit here?”

To this Boev responded, with loud, nasal derision in his tone:

“Yes, my lad, for the Lord has seen fit to prevent you from participating in His most holy festival.”

And the old soldier, in support of his mate, extended his pipe towards the river, and muttered with a grin:

“You want to cross to the town, do you? Well, be off with you, and though the ice may give way beneath your feet and drown you, at least you’ll be taken to the police station, and so get to your festival. For that’s what you want, I suppose?”

“True enough,” Mokei re-echoed.

Then the sun went in, and the river grew darker, while the town stood out more clearly. Ceaselessly, the younger men gazed towards the town with wistful, gloomy eyes, though silently they remained where they were.

Similarly, I myself was beginning to find things irksome and uncomfortable, as always happens when a number of companions are thinking different thoughts, and contain in themselves none of that unity of will which alone can join men into a direct, uniform force. Rather, I felt as though I could gladly leave my companions and start out upon the ice alone.

Suddenly Ossip recovered his faculties. Rising, then doffing his cap and making the sign of the cross in the direction of the town, he said with a quiet, simple, yet somehow authoritative, air:

“Very well, my mates. Go in peace, and may the Lord go with you!”

“But whither?” asked Sashok, leaping to his feet. “To the town? “

“Whither else?”

The old soldier was the only one not to rise, and with conviction he remarked:

“It will result but in our getting drowned.”

“Then stay where you are.”

Ossip glanced around the party. Then he continued:

“Bestir yourselves! Look alive!”

Upon which all crowded together, and Boev, thrusting the tools into a hole in the bank, groaned:

“The order ‘go’ has been given, so go we MUST, well though a man in receipt of such an order might ask himself, ‘How is it going to be done?'”

Ossip seemed, in some way, to have grown younger and more active, while the habitually shy, though good-humoured, expression of his countenance was gone from his ruddy features, and his darkened eyes had assumed an air of stern activity. Nay, even his indolent, rolling gait had disappeared, and in his step there was more firmness, more assurance, than had ever before been the case.

“Let every man take a plank,” he said, “and hold it in front of him. Then, should anyone fall in (which God forbid!), the plank-ends will catch upon the ice to either side of him, and hold him up. Also, every man must avoid cracks in the ice. Yes, and is there a rope handy? Here, Narodetz! Reach me that spirit-level. Is everyone ready? I will walk first, and next there must come–well, which is the heaviest?–you, soldier, and then Mokei, and then the Morduine, and then Boev, and then Mishuk, and then Sashok, and then Makarei, the lightest of all. And do you all take off your caps before starting, and say a prayer to the Mother of God. Ha! Here is Old Father Sun coming out to greet us.”

Readily did the men bare their tousled grey or flaxen heads as momentarily the sun glanced through a bank of thin white vapour before again concealing himself, as though averse to arousing any false hopes.

“Now!” sharply commanded Ossip in his new-found voice. “And may God go with us! Watch my feet, and don’t crowd too much upon one another, but keep each at a sazhen’s distance or more–in fact, the more the better. Yes, come, mates!”

With which, stuffing his cap into his bosom, and grasping the spirit-level in his hands, Ossip set foot upon the ice with a sliding, cautious, shuffling gait. At the same moment, there came from the bank behind us a startled cry of: