Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

of my soul. I shall tell you only that I prayed to God assiduously. Finally, we all began to give way to despair, for our boat was more than half inundated, and we stood in water up to our knees. Not infrequently we considered whether to quit the vessel and to walk along the stone reef to the shore; however, that one of our fellow passengers had already been on the rock for several hours and that another had disappeared from view suggested to us that the danger of walking across was greater than might have actually been the case. Amidst these sorts of woeful ponderings, we spotted on the water near the opposite shore, at some distance from us that was hard to define precisely, two black specks that appeared to be moving. The black something seen by us, and it was moving, seemed gradually to get bigger; finally, as it approached, it presented clearly to our eyes two small ships heading straight for the place where we were located in a state of despair that exceeded hope by a hundred times. As when in a building sealed off from light suddenly a door opens and a ray of daylight, having swooped rapidly into the middle of the gloom disperses it, expanding to the furthest boundaries of the entire building, so a ray of hope in salvation suffused our souls when we saw the ships. Despair turned to rapture, woe into jubilation, and there was a danger lest our joyous movements and clapping bring disaster upon us before we could be wrested from danger. But a hope of living, returning to our hearts, again roused thoughts that slumbered during our peril about the difference in ranks. This time it served the common good. I cut short excessive rejoicing, being liable to turn harmful. After a bit of time, we saw two large fishing boats approaching us and at their reaching us we saw that in one of them was our savior who, having walked along the stone reef to the shore, had sought out these boats in order to extricate us from certain death. Without dawdling one bit, we left our boat and sailed to the shore in the boats that had come to us, not forgetting to retrieve from the rock our fellow companion who had spent about seven hours there. No more than half an hour passed before our boat, wedged in the rocks, relieved of the weight, floated up and disintegrated completely. While we sailed to the shore in a state of rejoicing and the raptures of salvation, Pavel—that was the name of the fellow passenger who saved us—told us the following:

“‘Having left you in imminent danger, I hastened along the rocks to the shore. The wish to save you gave me unnatural strength, but about one hundred sazhen* from the shore my strength began to give out, and I began to despair for your salvation and my life. Yet after I lay for half an hour on a rock, I rose with renewed vigor and with no further rest crawled, as it were, all the way to the shore. There I sprawled on the grass, and after I rested about ten minutes, got up and raced with all my might along the strand to S… And while the depletion of my energy was considerable, by remembering you I made it to the spot. It seems as though the Heavens wanted to test your resolve and my patience, since I had found no boat for your rescue on the strand or in S… itself. Finding myself practically in despair, I thought there was no better place to seek help than from the superior officer there. I ran to the house where he lived. It was already the seventh hour. In the entrance room I found the sergeant of the local guard. Having briefly told him why I came and of your situation, I asked him to awaken Mr…, who was still resting. Mr. Sergeant said to me, “My friend, I do not dare.” “What! You do not dare? When twenty people are drowning, do you not dare to wake up one who can save them? You good-for-nothing are lying, I will go myself….”—Mr. Sergeant grabbed me by the shoulder not very courteously and shoved me out the door. I almost burst with indignation. But thinking more about the danger you were in than about the insult to me, and about the hard-heartedness of the man in charge and his deputy, I rushed off to the sentry station at a distance of about two versts* from the wretched house from which I had been ejected. I knew that the soldiers living there kept boats in which while sailing around the bay they collected cobbles for sale as paving stones. I was not mistaken in my hopes. I found these two small boats and my rejoicing was indescribable: you shall all be saved! If you had drowned, then I would have thrown myself into the water after you.’ Pavel was dissolving into tears while saying this. Meanwhile, we had reached the shore. When I got out of the boat I fell on my knees, raised my hands to the sky. ‘Almighty Father,’ I cried out, ‘it pleased You that we should live. You led us to a test, may it be Your will.’ This, my friend, is a weak depiction of what I felt. The terror of the last hour had pierced my soul; I saw the moment when I would cease to exist. What would I be? I know not. A terrifying unknown. Even now I can feel it: my hour has struck; I am dead; motion, life, feeling, thought, all vanish instantly. Imagine, my friend, that you are on the edge of the grave, wouldn’t you feel the spasmodic chill pouring through your veins and prematurely cutting off your life. O my friend!”—But I have digressed from my narrative.

My prayer completed, rage entered into my heart.