Sailor Nikitin - A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky

A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
Sailor Nikitin
true story
A sail, a sail - a promised price to hope!
Her nation, flag? What speaks the
telescope?
She walks the waters like a thing of life
And seems to dare the celements to strife.
Who would not brave the battle fire,
the wreck,
To move the monarch of her peopled deck?
Byran*
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* Ship, ship - hope for a prize! What nation is he, under what flag? what does the telescope say? He walks on the waves as if animated; he seems to be challenging the elements. Who is afraid of fire, water, just to walk like a sovereign on this crowded deck? (English). - Byron. (Author's translation. - Ed.)
In 1811, in the month of July, a small karbas went out to sea from the mouth of the Northern Dvina. I must tell you that in the month of July 1811, just like in the present year 1834, to which we lived by the grace of God and according to the assurance of the calendar of the Academy, the old Northern Dvina poured a huge column of her waters directly into the Northern Ocean, arguing twice on a day with a tide that most shamelessly invaded its cherished whirlpools and turned its sweet, noble trickles into a common pickle, suitable only for cod. I am obliged to explain to you, as a duty of literary conscience, that in those days, as hitherto, a ship was called karbas, eighteen paces long, six wide, with two single-pole masts, half-stitched with roots, half knocked down with nails, of which hardly a fifth were iron. Decks were usually not supposed to be on the karbas, and on the stern and on the bow small sheds formed konurki, where, on heaps of luggage, only the Russian back, and only one back, could cozy up, twisting into three deaths. As a result, as you yourself see, please, in the middle of the ship White light and colorless water above and below, to the right and to the left, could run in and live without credit, duty-free. This vessel, or, to put it more politely, this ship, - and the word "ship", mind you, I derive from the "box", and the box from "warp", and warp from "hump", and the hump from "mountain": I hope that it is clear; some foundling etymologists derive "ship" from some Greek word that I don't know, and don't want to know, but it's slander, it's a lie, it's a slander invented by some walnut seller; I, as you will see, am a native Russian, I come from a Russian root and grew up on Russian roots, with the exception of biquadratic ones, which were too tough for me, and therefore, I’ll tell you as a secret, I can’t stand anything overseas and don’t believe in anything foreign, - so, this ship, that is, this karbas, was very much like a lodia, or a boat, or a boat of the ancient Normans, and perhaps even the Argonauts, and proved the commendable constancy of the Russians in ship architecture, but at the same time he proved that truth, that we, with clumsy karbass, inherited from our Slavo-Russian ancestors a courage that would do honor to any hot pressed, force recruited sailor dancing to the whistle of man of war * on the polished deck of an English battleship, or a arrogant Yankee ** running to fasten a bayonet - bolt on the yardarm of the American shuner.
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* military (English).
** In derision, the British call North Americans yankee.
Yes, sir! When you think that a Russian peasant industrialist, a navigator, on some piece of wood, on a shitik, on a karbas, in a leather canoe, without a compass, without maps, with a slice of bread in his pocket, swam, went to the Grumant - that's what they call Novaya Earth - to Kamchatka from Okhotsk, to America from Kamchatka, so the heart laughs, and goosebumps run through the skin. Girdle around the world? Kopek! Listen to him talk about his travels, about which the French and English would not sing in songs, and the bells would not ring, and you will be convinced that labors and dangers are a toy for him. "We climbed to the Gebritskys and from there to the pass to Brazil, waved to the golden kingdom. From Brazil we pushed to Kamchatka, and from there, Sitka was just a stone's throw away!" Give me such daring men - and with them at least send for living water! Ocean hit? Let's scoop out the ocean with our caps! Sand sea? Like a tavlinka, we sniff it out! Ice mountains? Instead of a lollipop, we'll chew it! Where is madam Impossibility gone? Come out - maybe we'll need some soles! Under whom a good horse, perhaps, suits, the forest is not a forest, the river is not a river: wherever they jump - the road, wherever they turn around - space. On a whale? - so on a whale - what a sight! Sharpen with a toothpick! For a polar bear? we will kill with a click; and at the red hour, do not tuck under the hand of the evil one. It’s not the first time for us to forge nails on his teeth, to put a ring in his nose. To tell the truth, the hare is heavy on his feet; it is difficult to shake it; but as it goes, you won’t catch up with self-propelled guns. Where does he lazily say the first "as?". But when, after many: "Yes, what do I need it for! Yes, what do I need it for! We live like this; somehow we will shine through!" - he will get to "something, let's try!" yes, "maybe we'll do it," so give up, make way: stop and remember your name! He will outwit any German in the pulpit, beat the Frenchman in the field, and manage to do better than any Englishman in the factory. Don't believe? Plunge only into our literature, dare to read from beginning to end fiery articles about immortal cuckoo clocks, about the influence of native pasta on morality and about the education of virgin tobacco, articles so fiery that it is impossible to read them without an asbestos fire jacket - and you will be convinced that literary geniuses - self-cutters in Russia are as common as dried mushrooms in Lent, that we are more learned than scientists, for we have learned that science is nonsense; that we write better than all of Europe, because in our writings no one is killed, except for common sense.
But to the point. In 1811, not a single steamboat had ever frightened the fish people in the Russian rivers with its noisy wheels, and therefore the Dvina fish fearlessly stuck out their heads to admire the pitch-black karbas and those who ruled it. Here are the physiological details I received from one of the eyewitnesses, the pike: despite the Arkhangelsk salt and the unusual journey in the sledge, the style of this pike is so flowery, as if it ate the writers of all the dark, colorful and blue fairy tales; one must think that objects, reflected in a thousand facets of fish eyes, produce an extraordinary variety of impressions in their brain; original sample attached.
River, - fish always begin their speech from their fatherland, from their element: prudent fish! in this they do not in the least follow the poetic writers, who are most fond of talking about what they know least - the river flowed a little; the ship rolled quickly, guided by the current and the wind; gently sloping shores imperceptibly flowed past it, and if here and there the ships anchored here and there had not rendered the ship’s run like vertical pillars, then the swimmers in the karbas might have thought that they were motionless: the surrounding tundras were so monotonously empty, so silently dead. At that time, sugar and rope factories were not yet visible on the banks of the Dvina, and not a single shipyard was preparing to throw into the water the young skeletons of ships not yet dressed in oak flesh. In the whole space from Solombol to the mouth they did not meet a single living soul, although the multi-colored moss was covered with an orange cloudberry ...
- Great anti-scratch agent! - says my friend, a doctor. - Nature always places the antidote near the poison; As far as I know, cloudberries are now a branch of trade in the Pridvinsk region: they are exported for the English fleet in thousands of fortieth barrels.
... Cloudberries, spread out in bizarre patterns, like a veil of a northern beauty...
“It would be better to say, like Russian chintz,” says one married landowner, “because Russian home-made calicos are just like cloudberries in the swamp.
The fish blows its nose and continues:
Only a lone crane, the king of the desert, roamed there like a zoologist...
He - that is, a crane, not a scientist - stuck his nose into muddy water, into liquid silt and, pulling out some worm or gudgeon, proudly raised his head. Glancing back at the karbas, he calculated by eye the distance and, making sure that he was out of the shot, he chased the frisky frog, carelessly nodding his tail. He found the frog much more entertaining than humans.
And rightly so: at least Baron Brambeus does not at all look like a crane, but almost of the same opinion. “Frogs are not frogs,” he will say, “but that I will always prefer oysters to people! Firstly, the antiquity of the origin of oysters is deeper than any chronicle and undoubtedly Nestorova, so Baron Cuvier himself did not find a spot in their antediluvian genealogy; secondly, they more constant than the Chinese in their opinions: they are born to themselves and die by the rock to which they have grown, and with good will do not make fantastic journeys; and, thirdly, they do not start young literature in the old sea.
Judging by the composure, or, rather, by the carelessness with which the four sailors who made up the crew of the karbas, embarked on a noisy surf, formed by the struggle of river water with the pressure of the rising tide, they could be enlisted in the Varangian squad, without bringing under the recruiting measure. A healthy young man of about twenty-seven was sitting on the steering wheel: his hair was in a circle, his mustache was in a bracket, and his beard was a little curled, on his cheeks there was a blush that promised not to fade until he was sixty, with a smile that would not have flied away either from the ninth wave, or from himself. - nine of Satan, - in a word, a face both sharp-witted and simple-hearted, carefree and resolute; the physiognomy is real northern, Russian.
In terms of clothing, he belonged to the transitional breeds. On the head is an English downy hat, on the body is a cloth waistcoat with silver buttons; on the other hand, the red shirt went down in Russian style on Chinese trousers, and the boots, in accordance with the fashion that has been preserved with us since the Battle of Kulikovo, turned their pointed socks up. According to the self-satisfied looks that our helmsman threw at the topsail invented by him, pulled up over the rake sail, he belonged to the school of innovators. At the middle mast, in a canvas jacket and the same trousers, tarred to impenetrability, sat an old man of about fifty, whose blessed beard was in obvious discord with a short sailor's dress: a phenomenon always strange and not uncommon to this day. For a long time he sailed the seas on the ships of the merchant Brandt and company, but in vain he persuaded his owners to shave his beard. Hurricanes could pull at it, the sea could cling to it with its shells, interspersed with salt crystals, a case of sticking in a block or in an overwhelmed rope, but its owner was unshakable neither by the ridicule of the young people, nor by the blows of fate. He did not even lay a vow on her, and she, in her natural beauty, to her full height, spread over the chest and shoulders of the stubborn. Uncle Yakov, that was the name of this eccentric, sat on a keg of the Russian element, kvass, and splashed, that is, frightened, a rope. At his feet almost lay a young guy of about twenty, with his foot on the side and holding the sheet, the corner rope of the sail, with his hands. From his fresh face, from his rounded features not yet broken by experience, from the curiosity with which he moved his eyes around, even from his awkwardness, more than from the cut of his caftan, one could be sure that he was not a salted sailor, a rookie, fresh from villages.
Lying face down on the prow platform, his head overboard, was a stocky sailor with a physiognomy that nature casts in thousands for daily use. There was nothing to hang any feeling on it, and the thought, even if it had been forged on all four legs, would not have stayed on his smooth forehead. He spat into the water and admired how the jet carried away the image of his life, and then sang: "Oh, not alone! Oh, not alone!" - and spat again. He belonged to an endless series of practical philosophers who allow life in the most serene way - to work when necessary, sleep when possible.
The young man sitting on the steering wheel was the full and legitimate owner of the karbas, along with the cargo, and the temporary commander, captain or governor of Uncle Yakov, Alexei, a nephew after his heart, and the inevitable Ivan after the heart of the whole world. Left an orphan in the twelfth year of his age, he, like most of the daring children of the Arkhangelsk province, hired himself as a cabin boy on an English merchant ship and rode storms and waves until he was twenty-two years old, having the pleasure of receiving clicks from skippers of all nations and scoldings in all languages. Bored with the homeless life of a sailor, he joined the truly venerable class of exchange artel workers, people of proven honesty, sober, active, intelligent, and then he was taken with a good salary to the office of one of the richest foreign merchants in Arkhangelsk. After six years, he was already able to leave someone else's nest. He was tormented by the desire to taste his happiness, to trade in his own name, - and so he bought and equipped a karbas, - and now he is now for the fifth time, in another summer, embarking on the sea.
However, never before had Savely Nikitich - that was his name - set off at sea with such a reserve of gaiety as this time. I know the reason for this - and what do I not know? I don't want to hide it behind my soul. He is in good hour to say, in a thin silence - he planned to marry. The daughter of his neighbor, also an Arkhangelsk tradesman, like himself, Katerina Petrovna, charming, like all the Katerinas together, and pretty, like none of the Katerinas, our swimmer liked to the heart. His imagination, refined by the sea air, dreamed of nothing fresher, smarter and more worthy than this fair-haired beauty. What pleased him most of all was the fact that she was in a good order to fight off young naval officers who, in addition to their duties in the service, take upon themselves the education of young girls in all the ports of the five parts of the world. In a word, and finally, having spread his mind-reason, he summed up his pockets, smoothed his head with kvass, and, blessed, went to woo his sweetheart to her father. He must have come into contact with Katerina Petrovna herself long ago; and although I was not a witness, I already tell you on my own fear that my youth exchanged among themselves more than one oath of love and fidelity with the application of mutual kisses. How to be, gracious sovereigns! There is always smuggling in trade, hidden deals in matchmaking.
Savely was deeply moved; fell on his knees before Katenka's father, asking for blessings.
The old father stroked his head and lifted him up; stroked his beard and said:
- Listen, Savely Nikitich! You are a kind person, you are smart and honest guy: thank you for coming to me directly, without matchmakers, and I’ll tell you directly, without bluntness: I like you, I’m not averse to intermarrying with you; however...
Oh, this “however” has been sitting here for me, ever since the teacher wanted, in his words, to forgive me for my prank, but he whipped me for an example; since my sincere friend and my most faithful mistress swore affection to me and, at the word, however, deceived me ... However, let's leave this "however".
Savely, not daring to breathe, stood in front of the old man, sucking guesses out of his face with his eyes, but the word "however," pronounced with such an arrangement that twenty doubts could fit between each syllable, sawed his heart in half, and sawdust splashed in all directions.
- One-on-one (after two dashes), - the old man said and scratched his head, because the back of the head is the attic of the human mind, in which they dump all the rubbish of prejudices, all the rags of moralizing, stocks of long-trodden opinions and beliefs, broken flasks from -under the imagination; or, to put it better, he is a dark back shop in Gostinodvor, into which a shopper-friend is usually taken in order to get faded, old-fashioned goods off their hands. - However, Savely Nikitich! after all, it’s not for me to live with you, but for my daughter, and her dowry is not rich. I jump from penny to penny myself. I would be glad with my soul, but the bite is small: I have teenage sons. Again, I don’t want to see my daughter in need, it’s better to dig into the ground alive. However, around Katenka, you yourself are known, the suitors twine like hops.
"My little head is gone!" Savely thought.
- Do not reproach you, be remembered - your dead father was sitting in a shop, but left it on a stick: thanks to midshipmen, he bargained, paid good for his simplicity and let you ride like an orphan around the world like a copper penny. Do not judge, brother Savely! I know your name, I know your patronymic, but I don’t know your bellies. Tell me as in spirit: do you have something to acquire a household, but to earn a living for yourself and for your children?
Savely pulled out his wallet, showed him his certificates, laid out a thousand rubles for the chistogan, and another thousand for one and a half receipts for purchased goods: this is not a trifle for a tradesman.
“Besides, I have a ship and a loan,” he said, “I carry my head on my shoulders and, thanks to the creator, I am not empty-headed, not dry-handed. Last year I sold my goods profitably in Solovki, and was there in the spring; yes, if we get along with you, then with a wife of a light hand in the Spasovo spell I will again set off. Well, Mironych: are others better than me? Allow me!
- Well, Savely, hand! Only the wedding should be after the Savior. You will go to Solovki in advance and collect a penny for furnishing; otherwise there will be no end to the growth with a young wife. Do not cross me, Savely, I have a word with a rivet.
- This is very good! Savely said. "This is very bad!" Savely thought.
But there was nothing to be done: I had to agree to a postponement. They blessed her with an image, betrothed, and meanwhile, while the darling girlfriends sewed a dowry for Katya and sang, - meanwhile, as her father and mother drank and cried, Nikitin's karbas was equipped and loaded. The moment of parting was already behind us, already on the shoulder, already spreading its wings to fly away, but our dear, or, as the people of Arkhangelsk city say, "bazhon", the betrothed did not even think about it. Uncle Yakov was forced to drag the groom away from the bride. A fair wind seemed to him the most disgusting weather; but the wind overpowered love. Savely drank the last drop of the liquor, tore the last kiss from the bride's lips. The drop was sweet to him, the kiss was even sweeter; century would not part with them, but he parted. He had to hurry to leave in order to arrive quickly. He jumped into the karbas, the chain slid off the pile with a thunder, the karbas set sail.
For a long time Katya stood on the embankment, following her betrothed with her eyes, waving her white hand; her heart spoke not for good; she burst into tears and went home, wiping them with the sleeve of her cotton shirt. It was no better with Savely: as long as Katya was visible, he looked around, until he almost dislocated his neck, and then his eyes dived into the water, as if he had dropped his heart there, as if out of annoyance he wanted to ignite the stream of love with them. And finally, the vessel overflowing with bitterness spilled: tears splashed from the eyes of the poor fellow into three streams - and precisely into three, because two streams merged on his nose and rolled down the river, just like the South and Sukhona form the Northern Dvina. This, however, relieved Savely; he rested; the kind sun looked into his eyes so cheerfully that he smiled; the wind plowed and dried even the traces of tears; so hope-flier began to flirt with his soul. And what, in fact, good fellow was sad. In front of him - gold, behind - love! .. True, between these extremities lay two abysses of the sea, planted with dangers from storms and privateers - then there was a war with the British - but God is not without mercy, the Cossack is not without happiness: not in for the first time he had to travel with the sea. Five hours of travel and sixty versts of distance crept past like fugitives, and that is why our Saveliy so carelessly, so cheerfully set off into the surf that delimits salt water from fresh water.
And the sharp-breasted karbas hooted into the battle of the noisy, splashing bar with all the running start - so fast that the spray sparkled and crumbly foam doused the swimmers from head to toe. Karbas scooped. Frightened, drenched, Alexei released the sheet from his hands; the sail rinsed, the karbas arose, ran up to the ridge of the shaft and instantly, headlong, rushed through the water ridge. Five minutes later he was swimming like a gogol across the sea, which was advancing on the shores with a murmur.
- What, Alexey, - Savely asked the recruit, grinning, - al you don’t like christening sea ​​water?
- Good, - answered Alexey, wiping his face, - only without porridge and christening not at christening.
- Wait, brother Alyosha, we will redeem you in a salt font. Then we’ll put you with an oar and for porridge, mix it and put it in your mouth, eat and praise. Do you want a brother - we have a fizzy mash; green wine with foam unpurchased, unmeasured - drink as much as it enters your soul.
- Thank you kindly! Bring it to the elders first, uncle, - Alexei answered slyly.
- You are a guest at sea, we are the hosts, - Savely said, - and guests are treated beyond their years.
“However,” Uncle Yakov said, looking at the sky on patrol, “shouldn’t we hold off along the coast for the evening?” Something is very hovering: as if dust is gathering dust over the tundra. It will rise, the hour is not even, play a prince - so trouble will come to us on the high seas without trouble.
- To be afraid of a wolf - do not go into the forest, Uncle Yakov! Savely objected. The wind, like a treasure, is not given at every time: let's miss it - it will be so difficult to climb on it after. And when now we climb to the north-north-west, then we’ll roll like clockwork into Solovki when we feel like it. The sky is clear.
- Something! - said Uncle Yakov and began to finish the knot of the rope.
- We do, yes! - said Alexei, as if he understood something, and began to yawn in both senses of the word. Ivan did not reason and did not speak: he spat into the drink. Savely, by the privilege given to all people who have something ringing in their heads or in their pockets, built castles in the air. Karbas, the fifth act of our drama, swaying from side to side, deigned to swim and swim into the boundless sea.
The day wore on towards evening. The coast is nil; the island of Mudyug, standing on a clock at the entrance to the Dvina, dipped, and again looked out, and again dipped into the water. Soon the earth merged into a dark strip, into a line, barely visible; the shaft splashed this line too - goodbye, my homeland! The bottomless sky, the boundless sea now embraces the fragile ship. Only the free wind and the roaring waves sing their eternal, incomprehensible song to him in harmony, arousing vague thoughts about what was and what will be, about what never was and never will be.
I don’t know if you have ever experienced a feeling of separation from your native shore on the faith of the unsteady elements. But I experienced it myself; I followed it on people with a high-minded organization and on people of the most uneducated, hardened by habit. When you feel that the anchor has separated from the earth, it seems that the knot that fastened the heart to the ground is being untied, that the string of this heart is bursting. The chest becomes painful and unimaginable easily!.. The ship takes off running; curl overhead sea ​​birds, memories are swarming in my head, they are alone, tireless messengers, they carry news to the ship about the land they have abandoned, the soul - about the past irretrievable. But sinking and the last alcyone in the abyss gave, the last commemoration in the soul. The new world begins to absorb her. Then an inexplicable sadness takes possession of a person, sadness is already unearthly, not earthly, but still not at all heavenly, like a response of two worlds, two existences, the development of the infinite from the kidneys of the limited, a feeling that does not constrict, but expands the heart, a feeling of separation from humanity and merging with nature. I'm sure it is the deposit of our transition from time to eternity, sharp from the octave of death.
And inaudibly, with its balsamic hand, nature erases from the heart the deep, aching scars of grief, takes out the splinters of repentance, and blows away troublesome thoughts. It becomes clearer, crystallier, as if the rays of the sun, reflecting on the surface of the ocean and piercing feelings in all directions, transmit their transparency and brilliance to the heart, turning it into a morning star. You then begin to guess at the possibility of the opinion that matter is light absorbed by gravity, while thought, the moral sun, the spiritual eye of man, concentrating the world in itself, is matter striving to turn back into light through the word. Then the soul drinks its will with a full cup of heaven, bathes in the expanse of the ocean, and the whole person turns into a pure, serene, holy feeling of self-forgetfulness and ignorance of the world, like a baby now taken out of the font and dozing on the swell of the mother’s breast, warmed by her breath, cherished by her song. Oh, if I could beg from fate or renew to life with memory a few such hours! - I would...
“Then I wouldn’t read your stories at all,” one of those readers tells me with annoyance, who certainly want the hero of the story to dance incessantly and incessantly in front of them on a tightrope. If he happened to wriggle out of his way even for a moment, they would look behind the scenes, run through the chapter: “But where is he? What happened to him? Or worse, "Hasn't he done anything yet? Has nothing happened to him?"
“I wouldn’t have read your stories at all then, Mr. Marlinsky, because—excuse my frankness—I’ve yawned more than once and on the sly at your frequent, severe, and repeated digressions. a karbas that crawls through the water like a turtle over stones. No, sir, it floated up as it floated up. We think that it will grab Savely by the tuft, bypassing the firewall, and open in him some kind of Napoleonic passage or a sea robber. Not here - it happened! Instead of incidents, you have the chemical decomposition of sea water; instead of people bubble and, most annoyingly, instead of the promised adventures, your own dreams.
I promised you nothing, gracious sir, I say with possible composure for the author's vanity, pierced right through - vanity, from which blood is still dripping on the blade of mockery. Your will is to read or not to read me; mine is to write as you please.
"But, sir, I bought your story."
I didn't invite you; did not take you by the collar with courtesy, as is done in society when giving out lottery tickets or tickets to a concert for the poor. You have bought my story and you can burn it for burning, tear it up for a mustache curl, use waxes for a wrapper. With this you bought the right to scold or praise me, but you yourself have not bought and will not buy me - I warn you. My pen is an unauthorized bow, a witch's pomelo, a rider's horse. Yes, I am a free Cossack riding a feather, I can scour paper without a commandment, where my eyes look. That’s what I do: I drop the reins and don’t look back, I don’t count on what lies ahead. I don't want to know whether the wind sweeps my trail, whether my trail is straight or patterned. Jumped over the fence, swam across the river - good; failed - also good. I am already satisfied with the fact that I galloped across the expanse, completely, to the point of fatigue. I am sick and tired of your broken chaussees* of literary theories, your age-old pine-cut roads, your cast-iron ribbons and hanging bridges, your riding on a wooden horse or on a broken horse, your martingales, schlich-zigels and spanish-raiters; mad, bucking horse here! Steppes me, storms! I am light in dreams - I fly in the sky; Is it heavy with thoughts I dive into the depths of the sea ...

"Sailor Nikitin"

Ship, ship - hope for a prize! What nation is he, under what flag? what does the telescope say? He walks on the waves as if animated; he seems to be challenging the elements. Who is afraid of fire, water, just to walk like a sovereign on this crowded deck? - Byron. (Author's translation. - Ed.)

In 1811, in the month of July, a small karbas went out to sea from the mouth of the Northern Dvina. I must tell you that in the month of July 1811, just like in the present year 1834, to which we lived by the grace of God and according to the assurance of the calendar of the Academy, the old Northern Dvina poured a huge column of her waters directly into the Northern Ocean, arguing twice on a day with a tide that most shamelessly invaded its cherished whirlpools and turned its sweet, noble trickles into a common pickle, suitable only for cod. I am obliged to explain to you, as a duty of literary conscience, that in those days, as hitherto, a ship was called karbas, eighteen paces long, six wide, with two single-pole masts, half-stitched with roots, half knocked down with nails, of which hardly a fifth were iron. Decks were usually not supposed to be on the karbas, and on the stern and on the bow small sheds formed konurki, where, on heaps of luggage, only the Russian back, and only one back, could cozy up, twisting into three deaths. As a result, as you will see for yourself, white light and colorless water above and below, right and left, could run into the middle of the vessel and live without datum, duty-free. This vessel, or, to put it more politely, this ship, - and the word "ship", mind you, I derive from the "box", and the box from "warp", and warp from "hump", and the hump from "mountain": I hope that it is clear; some foundling etymologists derive "ship" from some Greek word that I don't know, and don't want to know, but it's slander, it's a lie, it's a slander invented by some walnut seller; I, as you will see, am a native Russian, I come from a Russian root and grew up on Russian roots, with the exception of biquadratic ones, which were too tough for me, and therefore, I’ll tell you as a secret, I can’t stand anything overseas and don’t believe in anything foreign, - so, this ship, that is, this karbas, was very much like a lodia, or a boat, or a boat of the ancient Normans, and perhaps even the Argonauts, and proved the commendable constancy of the Russians in ship architecture, but at the same time he proved that truth, that we, with clumsy karbass, inherited from our Slavo-Russian ancestors a courage that would do honor to any hot pressed, force recruited sailor dancing to the whistle of man of war * on the polished deck of an English battleship, or a arrogant Yankee ** running to fasten a bayonet - bolt on the yardarm of the American shuner.

* military (English).

** In derision, the British call North Americans yankee.

Yes, sir! When you think that a Russian peasant industrialist, a navigator, on some piece of wood, on a shitik, on a karbas, in a leather canoe, without a compass, without maps, with a slice of bread in his pocket, swam, went to the Grumant - that's what they call Novaya Earth - to Kamchatka from Okhotsk, to America from Kamchatka, so the heart laughs, and goosebumps run through the skin. Girdle around the world? Kopek! Listen to him talk about his travels, about which the French and English would not sing in songs, and the bells would not ring, and you will be convinced that labors and dangers are a toy for him. "We climbed to the Gebritskys and from there to the pass to Brazil, waved to the golden kingdom. From Brazil we pushed to Kamchatka, and from there, Sitka was just a stone's throw away!" Give me such daring men - and with them at least send for living water! Ocean hit? Let's scoop out the ocean with our caps! Sand sea? Like a tavlinka, we sniff it out! Ice mountains? Instead of a lollipop, we'll chew it! Where is madam Impossibility gone? Come out - maybe we'll need some soles! Under whom a good horse, perhaps, suits, the forest is not a forest, the river is not a river: wherever they jump - the road, wherever they turn around - space. On a whale? - so on a whale - what a sight! Sharpen with a toothpick! For a polar bear? we will kill with a click; and at the red hour, do not tuck under the hand of the evil one. It’s not the first time for us to forge nails on his teeth, to put a ring in his nose. To tell the truth, the hare is heavy on his feet; it is difficult to shake it; but as it goes, you won’t catch up with self-propelled guns. Where does he lazily say the first "as?". But when, after many: "Yes, what do I need it for! Yes, what do I need it for! We live like this; somehow we will shine through!" - he will get to "something, let's try!" yes, "maybe we'll do it," so give up, make way: stop and remember your name! He will outwit any German in the pulpit, beat the Frenchman in the field, and manage to do better than any Englishman in the factory. Don't believe? Plunge only into our literature, dare to read from beginning to end fiery articles about immortal cuckoo clocks, about the influence of native pasta on morality and about the education of virgin tobacco, articles so fiery that it is impossible to read them without an asbestos fire jacket - and you will be convinced that literary geniuses - self-cutters in Russia are as common as dried mushrooms in Lent, that we are more learned than scientists, for we have learned that science is nonsense; that we write better than all of Europe, because in our writings no one is killed, except for common sense.

But to the point. In 1811, not a single steamboat had ever frightened the fish people in the Russian rivers with its noisy wheels, and therefore the Dvina fish fearlessly stuck out their heads to admire the pitch-black karbas and those who ruled it. Here are the physiological details I received from one of the eyewitnesses, pikes: despite the Arkhangelsk salt and its unusual journey in the sledge, the style of this pike is so flowery, as if it ate the writers of all dark, colorful and blue fairy tales; one must think that objects, reflected in a thousand facets of fish eyes, produce an extraordinary variety of impressions in their brain; original sample attached.

River, - fish always begin their speech from their fatherland, from their element: prudent fish! in this they do not in the least follow the poetic writers, who are most fond of talking about what they know least - the river flowed a little; the ship rolled quickly, guided by the current and the wind; gently sloping shores imperceptibly flowed past it, and if here and there the ships anchored here and there had not rendered the ship’s run like vertical pillars, then the swimmers in the karbas might have thought that they were motionless: the surrounding tundras were so monotonously empty, so silently dead. At that time, sugar and rope factories were not yet visible on the banks of the Dvina, and not a single shipyard was preparing to throw into the water the young skeletons of ships not yet dressed in oak flesh. In the whole space from Solombol to the mouth they did not meet a single living soul, although the multi-colored moss was covered with an orange cloudberry ...

Excellent antiseptic! - says my friend, a doctor. - Nature always places the antidote near the poison; As far as I know, cloudberries are now a branch of trade in the Pridvinsk region: they are exported for the English fleet in thousands of fortieth barrels.

Cloudberry, spread out in bizarre patterns, like a veil of a northern beauty...

It would be better to say, like Russian chintz, - says one married landowner, - because Russian home-made calicos are just like cloudberries in the swamp.

The fish blows its nose and continues: Only a lone crane, the king of the desert, roamed there like a scientist in the field of zoology ...

He - that is, a crane, not a scientist - stuck his nose into muddy water, into liquid silt and, pulling out some worm or gudgeon, proudly raised his head. Glancing back at the karbas, he calculated by eye the distance and, making sure that he was out of the shot, he chased the frisky frog, carelessly nodding his tail. He found the frog much more entertaining than humans.

And rightly so: at least Baron Brambeus does not at all look like a crane, but almost of the same opinion. “Frogs are not frogs,” he will say, “but that I will always prefer oysters to people! Firstly, the antiquity of the origin of oysters is deeper than any chronicle and undoubtedly Nestorova, so Baron Cuvier himself did not find a spot in their antediluvian genealogy; secondly, they more constant than the Chinese in their opinions: they are born to themselves and die by the rock to which they have grown, and with good will do not make fantastic journeys; and, thirdly, they do not start young literature in the old sea.

Judging by the composure, or, rather, by the carelessness with which the four sailors who made up the crew of the karbas, embarked on a noisy surf, formed by the struggle of river water with the pressure of the rising tide, they could be enlisted in the Varangian squad, without bringing under the recruiting measure. A healthy young man of about twenty-seven was sitting on the steering wheel: his hair was in a circle, his mustache was in a bracket, and his beard was a little curled, on his cheeks there was a blush that promised not to fade until he was sixty, with a smile that would not have flied away either from the ninth wave, or from himself. - nine of Satan, - in a word, a face both sharp-witted and simple-hearted, carefree and resolute; the physiognomy is real northern, Russian.

In terms of clothing, he belonged to the transitional breeds. On the head is an English downy hat, on the body is a cloth waistcoat with silver buttons; on the other hand, the red shirt went down in Russian style on Chinese trousers, and the boots, in accordance with the fashion that has been preserved with us since the Battle of Kulikovo, turned their pointed socks up. According to the self-satisfied looks that our helmsman threw at the topsail invented by him, pulled up over the rake sail, he belonged to the school of innovators. At the middle mast, in a canvas jacket and the same trousers, tarred to impenetrability, sat an old man of about fifty, whose blessed beard was in obvious discord with a short sailor's dress: a phenomenon always strange and not uncommon to this day. For a long time he sailed the seas on the ships of the merchant Brandt and company, but in vain he persuaded his owners to shave his beard. Hurricanes could pull at it, the sea could cling to it with its shells, interspersed with salt crystals, a case of sticking in a block or in an overwhelmed rope, but its owner was unshakable neither by the ridicule of the young people, nor by the blows of fate. He did not even lay a vow on her, and she, in her natural beauty, to her full height, spread over the chest and shoulders of the stubborn. Uncle Yakov, that was the name of this eccentric, sat on a keg of the Russian element, kvass, and splashed, that is, frightened, a rope. At his feet almost lay a young guy of about twenty, with his foot on the side and holding the sheet, the corner rope of the sail, with his hands. From his fresh face, from his rounded features not yet broken by experience, from the curiosity with which he moved his eyes around, even from his awkwardness, more than from the cut of his caftan, one could be sure that he was not a salted sailor, a rookie, fresh from villages.

Lying face down on the prow platform, his head overboard, was a stocky sailor with a physiognomy that nature casts in thousands for daily use. There was nothing to hang any feeling on it, and the thought, even if it had been forged on all four legs, would not have stayed on his smooth forehead. He spat into the water and admired how the jet carried away the image of his life, and then sang: "Oh, not alone! Oh, not alone!" - and spat again. He belonged to an endless series of practical philosophers who allow life in the most serene way - to work when necessary, sleep when possible.

The young man sitting on the steering wheel was the full and legitimate owner of the karbas, along with the cargo, and the temporary commander, captain or governor of Uncle Yakov, Alexei, a nephew after his heart, and the inevitable Ivan after the heart of the whole world. Left an orphan in the twelfth year of his age, he, like most of the daring children of the Arkhangelsk province, hired himself as a cabin boy on an English merchant ship and rode storms and waves until he was twenty-two years old, having the pleasure of receiving clicks from skippers of all nations and scoldings in all languages. Bored with the homeless life of a sailor, he joined the truly venerable class of exchange artel workers, people of proven honesty, sober, active, intelligent, and then he was taken with a good salary to the office of one of the richest foreign merchants in Arkhangelsk. After six years, he was already able to leave someone else's nest. He was tormented by the desire to taste his happiness, to trade in his own name, - and so he bought and equipped a karbas, - and now he is now for the fifth time, in another summer, embarking on the sea.

However, never before had Savely Nikitich - that was his name - set off at sea with such a reserve of gaiety as this time. I know the reason for this - and what do I not know? I don't want to hide it behind my soul. He - in a good hour to say, in a bad hour to be silent - decided to marry. The daughter of his neighbor, also an Arkhangelsk tradesman, like himself, Katerina Petrovna, charming, like all the Katerinas together, and pretty, like none of the Katerinas, our swimmer liked to the heart. His imagination, refined by the sea air, dreamed of nothing fresher, smarter and more worthy than this fair-haired beauty. What pleased him most of all was the fact that she was in a good order to fight off young naval officers who, in addition to their duties in the service, take upon themselves the education of young girls in all the ports of the five parts of the world. In a word, and finally, having spread his mind-reason, he summed up his pockets, smoothed his head with kvass, and, blessed, went to woo his sweetheart to her father. He must have come into contact with Katerina Petrovna herself long ago; and although I was not a witness, I already tell you on my own fear that my youth exchanged among themselves more than one oath of love and fidelity with the application of mutual kisses. How to be, gracious sovereigns! In trade there is always smuggling, in matchmaking there are hidden deals.

Savely was deeply moved; fell on his knees before Katenka's father, asking for blessings.

The old father stroked his head and lifted him up; stroked his beard and said:

Listen, Savely Nikitich! You are a kind person, you are a smart and honest guy: thank you for coming to me directly, without matchmakers, and I will tell you directly, without prejudice: I like you, I am not averse to intermarrying with you; however...

Oh, this “however” has been sitting here for me, ever since the teacher wanted, in his words, to forgive me for my prank, but he whipped me for an example; since my sincere friend and my most faithful mistress swore affection to me and, at the word, however, deceived me ... However, let's leave this "however".

Savely, not daring to breathe, stood in front of the old man, sucking guesses out of his face with his eyes, but the word "however," pronounced with such an arrangement that twenty doubts could fit between each syllable, sawed his heart in half, and sawdust splashed in all directions.

One-on-one (after two dashes), - the old man said and scratched his head, because the back of the head is the attic of the human mind, in which they dump all the rubbish of prejudices, all the rags of moralizing, stocks of long-trodden opinions and beliefs, broken flasks from - under the imagination; or, to put it better, he is a dark back shop in Gostinodvor, into which a shopper-friend is usually taken in order to get faded, old-fashioned goods off their hands. - However, Savely Nikitich! after all, it’s not for me to live with you, but for my daughter, and her dowry is not rich. I jump from penny to penny myself. I would be glad with my soul, but the bite is small: I have teenage sons. Again, I don’t want to see my daughter in need, it’s better to dig into the ground alive. However, around Katenka, you yourself are known, the suitors twine like hops.

"My little head is gone!" Savely thought.

Do not reproach you, be remembered - your dead father was sitting in a shop, but left it on a stick: thanks to the midshipmen, he bargained, paid good for his simplicity and let you ride like a copper penny in the wide world. Do not judge, brother Savely! I know your name, I know your patronymic, but I don’t know your bellies. Tell me as in spirit: do you have something to acquire a household, but to earn a living for yourself and for your children?

Savely pulled out his wallet, showed him his certificates, laid out a thousand rubles for the chistogan, and another thousand for one and a half receipts for purchased goods: this is not a trifle for a tradesman.

Moreover, I have a ship and a loan, - he said, - I carry my head on my shoulders and, thanks to the creator, I am not empty-headed, not dry-handed. Last year I sold my goods profitably in Solovki, and was there in the spring; yes, if we get along with you, then with a wife of a light hand in the Spasovo spell I will again set off. Well, Mironych: are others better than me? Allow me!

Well, Savely, hand! Only the wedding should be after the Savior. You will go to Solovki in advance and collect a penny for furnishing; otherwise there will be no end to the growth with a young wife. Do not cross me, Savely, I have a word with a rivet.

This is very good! Savely said. "This is very bad!" Savely thought.

But there was nothing to be done: I had to agree to a postponement. They blessed her with an image, betrothed, and meanwhile, while the darling girlfriends sewed a dowry for Katya and sang, - meanwhile, as her father and mother drank and cried, Nikitin's karbas was equipped and loaded. The moment of parting was already behind us, already on the shoulder, already spreading its wings to fly away, but our dear, or, as the people of Arkhangelsk city say, "bazhon", the betrothed did not even think about it. Uncle Yakov was forced to drag the groom away from the bride. A fair wind seemed to him the most disgusting weather; but the wind overpowered love. Savely drank the last drop of the liquor, tore the last kiss from the bride's lips. The drop was sweet to him, the kiss was even sweeter; century would not part with them, but he parted. He had to hurry to leave in order to arrive quickly. He jumped into the karbas, the chain slid off the pile with a thunder, the karbas set sail.

For a long time Katya stood on the embankment, following her betrothed with her eyes, waving her white hand; her heart spoke not for good; she burst into tears and went home, wiping them with the sleeve of her cotton shirt. It was no better with Savely: as long as Katya was visible, he looked around, until he almost dislocated his neck, and then his eyes dived into the water, as if he had dropped his heart there, as if out of annoyance he wanted to ignite the stream of love with them. And finally, the vessel overflowing with bitterness spilled: tears splashed from the eyes of the poor fellow into three streams - and precisely into three, because two streams merged on his nose and rolled down the river, just like the South and Sukhona form the Northern Dvina. This, however, relieved Savely; he rested; the kind sun looked into his eyes so cheerfully that he smiled; the wind plowed and dried even the traces of tears; so hope-flier began to flirt with his soul. And why, in fact, the good fellow was sad. In front of him - gold, behind - love! .. True, between these extremities lay two abysses of the sea, planted with dangers from storms and privateers - then there was a war with the British - but God is not without mercy, the Cossack is not without happiness: not in for the first time he had to travel with the sea. Five hours of travel and sixty versts of distance crept past like fugitives, and that is why our Saveliy so carelessly, so cheerfully set off into the surf that delimits salt water from fresh water.

And the sharp-breasted karbas hooted into the battle of the noisy, splashing bar with all the running start - so fast that the spray sparkled and crumbly foam doused the swimmers from head to toe. Karbas scooped. Frightened, drenched, Alexei released the sheet from his hands; the sail rinsed, the karbas arose, ran up to the ridge of the shaft and instantly, headlong, rushed through the water ridge. Five minutes later he was swimming like a gogol across the sea, which was advancing on the shores with a murmur.

What, Alexei, - Savely asked the recruit, grinning, - don’t you like christening with sea water?

Good, - answered Alexei, wiping his face, - only without porridge and christening not at christening.

Wait, brother Alyosha, we will redeem you in a salty font. Then we’ll put you with an oar and for porridge, mix it and put it in your mouth, eat and praise. Do you want a brother - we have a fizzy mash; green wine with foam unpurchased, unmeasured - drink as much as it enters your soul.

Thank you kindly! Bring it to the elders first, uncle, - Alexei answered slyly.

You are a guest at sea, we are the hosts, - Savely said, - and guests are treated beyond their years.

However, - said Uncle Yakov, looking around at the sky, - shouldn't we hold off along the coast for the evening? Something is very hovering: as if dust is gathering dust over the tundra. It will rise, the hour is not even, play a prince - so trouble will come to us on the high seas without trouble.

To be afraid of a wolf - do not go into the forest, Uncle Yakov! Savely objected. - The wind, like a treasure, is not given at every time: let's miss it - it will be so difficult to climb on it after. And when now we climb to the north-north-west, then we’ll roll like clockwork into Solovki when we feel like it. The sky is clear.

Something! - said Uncle Yakov and began to finish the knot of the rope.

Let's go, yes! - said Alexei, as if he understood something, and began to yawn in both senses of the word. Ivan did not reason and did not speak: he spat into the drink. Savely, according to the privilege given to all people who have something ringing in their heads or in their pockets, built castles in the air. Karbas, the fifth act of our drama, swaying from side to side, deigned to swim and swim into the boundless sea.

The day wore on towards evening. The coast is nil; the island of Mudyug, standing on a clock at the entrance to the Dvina, dipped, and again looked out, and again dipped into the water. Soon the earth merged into a dark strip, into a line, barely visible; the shaft splashed this line too - goodbye, my homeland! The bottomless sky, the boundless sea now embraces the fragile ship. Only the free wind and the roaring waves sing their eternal, incomprehensible song to him in harmony, arousing vague thoughts about what was and what will be, about what never was and never will be.

I don’t know if you have ever experienced a feeling of separation from your native shore on the faith of the unsteady elements. But I experienced it myself; I followed it on people with a high-minded organization and on people of the most uneducated, hardened by habit. When you feel that the anchor has separated from the earth, it seems that the knot that fastened the heart to the ground is being untied, that the string of this heart is bursting. The chest becomes painful and unimaginable easily!.. The ship takes off running; sea ​​birds hover overhead, memories swarm in my head, they alone, tireless messengers, carry news to the ship about the land he has abandoned, the soul - about the past irretrievable. But sinking and the last alcyone in the abyss gave, the last commemoration in the soul. The new world begins to absorb her. Then an inexplicable sadness takes possession of a person, sadness is already unearthly, not earthly, but still not at all heavenly, like a response of two worlds, two existences, the development of the infinite from the kidneys of the limited, a feeling that does not constrict, but expands the heart, a feeling of separation from humanity and merging with nature. I'm sure it is the deposit of our transition from time to eternity, sharp from the octave of death.

And inaudibly, with its balsamic hand, nature erases from the heart the deep, aching scars of grief, takes out the splinters of repentance, and blows away troublesome thoughts. It becomes clearer, crystallier, as if the rays of the sun, reflecting on the surface of the ocean and piercing feelings in all directions, transmit their transparency and brilliance to the heart, turning it into a morning star. You then begin to guess at the possibility of the opinion that matter is light absorbed by gravity, while thought, the moral sun, the spiritual eye of man, concentrating the world in itself, is matter striving to turn back into light through the word. Then the soul drinks its will with a full cup of heaven, bathes in the expanse of the ocean, and the whole person turns into a pure, serene, holy feeling of self-forgetfulness and ignorance of the world, like a baby now taken out of the font and dozing on the swell of the mother’s breast, warmed by her breath, cherished by her song. Oh, if I could beg from fate or renew to life with memory a few such hours! - I would...

“Then I wouldn’t read your stories at all,” one of those readers tells me with annoyance, who certainly want the hero of the story to dance incessantly and incessantly in front of them on a tightrope. If he happened to wriggle out of his way even for a moment, they would look behind the scenes, run through the chapter: “But where is he? What happened to him? Or worse, "Hasn't he done anything yet? Has nothing happened to him?"

“I wouldn’t have read your stories at all then, Mr. Marlinsky, because—excuse my frankness—I’ve yawned more than once and on the sly at your frequent, severe, and repeated digressions. a karbas that crawls through the water like a turtle over stones. No, sir, it floated up as it floated up. We think that it will grab Savely by the tuft, bypassing the firewall, and open in him some kind of Napoleonic passage or a sea robber. Not here - it was! Instead of incidents, you have the chemical decomposition of sea water; instead of people, soap bubbles; and, most annoyingly, instead of the promised adventures, your own dreams.

I promised you nothing, gracious sir, I say with possible composure for the author's vanity, pierced right through - vanity, from which blood is still dripping on the blade of mockery. Your will is to read or not to read me; mine is to write as you please.

"But, sir, I bought your story."

I didn't invite you; did not take you by the collar with courtesy, as is done in society when giving out lottery tickets or tickets to a concert for the poor. You have bought my story and you can burn it for burning, tear it up for a mustache curl, use waxes for a wrapper. With this you bought the right to scold or praise me, but you yourself have not bought and will not buy me - I warn you. My pen is an unauthorized bow, a witch's pomelo, a rider's horse. Yes, I am a free Cossack riding a feather, I can scour paper without a commandment, where my eyes look. That’s what I do: I drop the reins and don’t look back, I don’t count on what lies ahead. I don't want to know whether the wind sweeps my trail, whether my trail is straight or patterned. Jumped over the fence, swam across the river - good; failed - also good. I am already satisfied with the fact that I galloped across the expanse, completely, to the point of fatigue. I am sick and tired of your broken chaussees* of literary theories, your age-old pine-cut roads, your cast-iron ribbons and hanging bridges, your riding on a wooden horse or on a broken horse, your martingales, schlich-zigels and spanish-raiters; mad, bucking horse here! Steppes me, storms! I am light in dreams - I fly in the sky; Is it heavy with thoughts - I dive into the depths of the sea ...

* smooth (fr.).

"And bring some shell from the bottom."

Even a handful of dirt, my dear sir. She will still be a witness that I was at the very bottom. For a merchant of roads pearls; the naturalist gives his ring for another underwater grass. What will the pearl add to the total of human happiness? And this weed, perhaps, will turn into a bright idea, will form a link of useful knowledge. I want to know: are you a merchant or a tester?

My reader is a nobleman, not only personal, but, perhaps, two-faced, hereditary: he does not want to call himself a merchant. Again, he cannot stand the naturalists of all kinds, who plast, gut nature, dissect the brain, and heart, and human pockets alive, even if they are of the fifth grade, and catch insect thoughts, reptile feelings there. Yes, not only do they file all this for wit and expose it to the consideration of the most respectable public; they eavesdrop at the doors of offices, crawl under matrimonial headboards, rub themselves into the vestibules of the chambers, dig under coffins, penetrate everywhere like gold, dig into souls like flattery, and then - you are welcome! - all your secrets are already on the pusher.

"No, I'm not a merchant, not a tester," he says, "I'm just a reader."

I put my remarks in your mind, like my money in a pawnshop: in the name of an unknown person!

This, at least, is clear and undeniable. Do not hope to get more than four, legal, percent - and this is behind your back. True, I am talking about the Arkhangelsk tradesman Savely Nikitin and I guarantee that this anecdote will be entertaining for a Russian, for the very reason that it is not an invention. But who told you that I myself am less entertaining than Savely Nikitin? Do you know how many passions I ground with my heart? what marvelous patterns has the world minted in my imagination? And if I were to take it into my head to translate my experiences, dreams and thoughts from the soul into the language of the day, you, you yourself, sir, would find these notes as entertaining as Trelawney's "Notes" or "The Last Indiscretion of a Contemporary Woman."

"For Smirdin's sake, do it as soon as possible, my dear! And emboss it in a big eight-figure with a Gothic title and Joanno's vignette. I'm afraid of vignettes and memoirs, especially of the Vidocq family. Do you have your word? Tell me yes! my!.."

With us, the printed side of a person will always resemble the lining from one of the posters of the comedian Tsapat in "Gilblaze"; and that is why, dear sir, if you want to know me, then recognize me in pieces, guess me in shavings, in a notch, in alloy. Don't bother me telling stories about others: really, you won't be left out.

I pick up the loose loop of the story.

Savely sat thoughtful on the steering wheel. Her heart now swelled like a sail, then fell like a wave. A sense of infinity took possession of him, and then to the question: "What are you thinking about?" - he could answer: "About nothing!" in all truth, because all thoughts, all sensations at such hours are like drops that suddenly fly away into formless vapors: they are pouring, mixed, boundless. Comrades Savelya were more or less immersed in the same unconscious, dumb contemplation and attention of nature in themselves and themselves in nature; into a sense of consciousness inseparable from the event, accessible, I think, to all animals.

Finally, Uncle Yakov's nephew, who, in all likelihood, reluctantly parted with his hut, and his scythe, and his lover's scythe, with a burner and with burners, was the first to break the general silence.

What a parable, you think! A man managed to swim in a trough in the sea, to tempt God! Has the earth come together like a wedge? Al didn’t have any land on earth?

You should be silent, silent, ”Uncle Yakov objected with annoyance. - If you went to seafarers, then there is nothing to grieve on the earth! Earth! Eka is unseen! See what you've come up with!

Really, Uncle Yakov, I did not invent it.

Is it for you to invent it when you don’t know how to think about it in any way! We have a lot of land, but there is little in the land: for captivity, we had to plow the sea with a wheel. I suppose you like to eat grits, and put on a blue caftan, and sometimes have a break: do fine cloth and sugar grow on our birches? As? So the daring heads are sailing across the sea, for red goods. You won’t go to the forest, and you will freeze on the floors.

Fools have a head like an Asian caravanserai: bare walls without an owner. Thoughts come into her from nowhere; they leave, I don't know where. The word "sea" flew through Ivan's ears and released the spring of the song. There was nothing in his head but songs; he lingered:

Across the sea, the titmouse did not live luxuriantly;

She did not live magnificently, she brewed beer, she bought malt, she borrowed hops.

In turn, the word "beer" with a wonderful combination of ideas awakened in Alexei a beer memory, and he, wiping the dreamy foam from his lips, said:

Do you know what, Uncle Yakov! at other times it would not have entered my mind to grieve at home, but now we have a holiday in the yard in the village; so if it were possible for the throne to light a candle, it would be more visible to go into the sea.

You are young, brother, you, Olesha, are a thief! Not a candle, but a stove on your mind. Not to pray, but to eat, hunting disassembles you. It was not for nothing that the old people put together a proverb - whoever has not been to the sea has not prayed to God to his full. Yes, if there is not enough space here, then pray in Solovki - I don’t want to. Good people from the ends of the earth they go there on foot on pilgrimage, and by chance, without difficulty, such grace has fallen - bow to the miracle workers Zosima and Savvaty, venerate the relics, marvel at their miracles! Ahnesh, brother, how will you see the bulk of the walls of the monastery! Heights, - look, so the hat is off; thickness, - ten chariots will gallop side by side; and each stone is larger than the hut. After all, the angels helped the saints: a person can neither think of it, nor guess, not that he can lift such a burden with his hands.

Is Al Solovetsky an island a cliff, Uncle Yakov?

That's the wonder that it's not a cliff. The coast is like Dvina: sand, somewhere with underwater boulders. And the birds, what are the birds! At the dawn of the Indus, a groan stands! Geese, swans, like foam; under God's shadow, paradise for them. No one beats them, does not confuse, cordial. At the very gates, cranes stand on one leg, wild ducklings splash, and baleen whales play, waiting for handouts from the walls.

And what, Uncle Yakov, will a whale-fish, by an example, be as tall and stout as a royal ship?

Whale to whale, - uncle Yakov answered with dignity. - There are ten fathoms, there are twenty fathoms: yes, in our lifetime they have been so crushed. Was it in the old days! About two forty years ago, in a terrible storm, the Solovetsky whale passed by - no end in sight; he played out with his tail, the tail was a whirlwind and swollen like a sail: a whale cannot whip it against the water. And he would have splashed, flooded the low-lying island, flooded the monastery with bell towers. Father Archimandrite and all the elders prayed tearfully all night long: "Bring, Lord, the whale fish past! Don't let it hit the sea with a mistake!" And they prayed for the inevitable misfortune: in the morning the whale fell past, the storm subsided. Even in Arkhangelsk one could hear when the huge clay bells were struck with joy on Solovki. "Well, thank God! - they said. - The monastery of the Monks Savvaty and Zosima is alive!"

And what, are these clay bells burnt or made of raw? Alexei asked incredulously.

God did not allow me to see for myself: only the sexton told me that they are still hanging in a hiding place, and how they will begin to preach the gospel in them - a hearing: that your birds of paradise sing! Yes, you yourself can ask about everything: by sunrise we will be in Solovki.

If we become! - said Alexei.

And why not? One hundred and twenty versts later we will remake.

Do not brag, Uncle Yakov, - said Savely, - but rather let's whistle the weather; you see, the breeze has died down, fallen.

Submissive to the general superstition of sailors, Uncle Yakov began to whistle, as one whistles for horses to drink. And indeed the wind fluttered, as if waiting for an invitation; freshened up, fastened fast. The swell rolled out in ridges, the ridges collided into steep shafts, and, finally, the sea gave a rumble, similar to the rumble preceding the boiling of water in huge cauldron. The sun was setting in fiery clouds, the whole west was boiling as if with blood - a sure sign of bad weather; when the horizontal rays broke in the transparent blue, in the iridescent green of the rampart, it shone through like glass, it flared up like a cloud of lightning, and went out, and darkened, and collapsed, overwhelmed by others.

Savely, forced to hold back to the wind so as not to dive far into the ocean, leaned point-blank on the tiller. Uncle Yakov and Ivan were holding sheets of a reefed (reduced) grotto in their hands. Aleksey, pale as a shroud, sat clinging to the side, and looked with horror at the waves whipping against the side of the ship. They seemed to him to be monsters that look into the karbas to grab and devour it.

Look, look, Uncle Yakov! - he said. - The shafts are chasing after us. Passion, and more!

Al marvelous to you that the old ramparts danced. Yes, brother, they will soon turn gray themselves, soon they will make our brother gray. You do not look at their dance, otherwise your head will just spin.

And indeed so! Savely said. - Instead of staring at the ramparts, Alyosha, take a watering can and scoop out water: you see, then you know it gives. Well, Uncle Jacob! in vain I didn’t listen to you: to hold me to the shore, otherwise my acquaintances buried me even in good weather, as soon as I get into the sea on a karbas, and if I knew and guessed, I wouldn’t go sober myself into such a dump. Look at the clouds: as if unkind people are wandering around and around and talking among themselves, where to go on robbery.

What good, - said Uncle Yakov, - perhaps they will get to us, but our gates are wide open. Long will this night be for us!!

And the night covered the sky with heavy clouds, and the clouds splashed like waves, and the sea raged like the sky. The whirlwind spiraled, swept, sprayed vapors and waves. Now black clouds opened their fiery mouth, gaping with the sting of lightning, then white-maned waves, roaring, swallowed the fragile ship and again spewed it out of the abyss. They barely had time to cast in the karbas. The sails were already drawn, but the squalls whipped her so hard that her naked masts cracked; he flew like a mad horse, and our swimmers waited every minute - he was about to burrow into the water! And suddenly a thunderclap broke out over them: fire fell in a shower into all the cracks of the bursting vault of heaven, and at the same moment, a wave swollen by a gust hit the stern. Karbas drank death; the moment was terrible. It seemed to the swimmers - they were doused with a fiery waterfall from above and below; they closed their blinded eyes so as not to open them forever Savely with a cry: "Lord, receive my soul!" - released the tiller. Alexei dropped the watering can...

Now pray! Uncle Yakov told him.

Only Ivan did not stop working: through the roar of the storm and the waves, his sonorous song was heard:

Because of the Volga, the godfather sailed in a sieve, rowed with spindles, sailed with a skirt

Savely did not want to die, because he was going to live; Alexei - because he did not have time to live; Uncle Yakov - because he was not ready to die. But what did death mean, what was the past and the future for Ivan? He had nothing to hang these enigmatic thoughts on. He would leave the world just as he entered it, without the slightest arbitrariness or regret. Lucky Ivan! I would not take your life away from you, but I would envy your death. Who, rolling away from life into eternity in a coffin, does not look back with a sigh, does not look forward with doubt, if not with horror? .. And he was drowning and singing!

And do you believe? when the rumble of a thunderclap subsided in the souls of the swimmers, they burst out laughing at Ivan's song and laughed for a long time, laughed at each other, as if in a fit. Unravel the human heart now! It most likely gives laughter in moments of the most cruel grief and horror! I have seen and experienced it.

The storm died with the last blow of its fury. The wind dropped suddenly. Nature, like man, or, to put it better, man, like nature, is quick-tempered and stormy in his summer - for a moment. The clouds seemed to be melted by lightning in the rain, and the moon, having bathed in the cloud, gleamed merrily in the darkness of the sky; only on the edge of the horizon fugitive clouds crowded. They flew away, murmuring, snarling, and sometimes their shots flashed like lightning; the ramparts washed away the retarded; the ramparts still walked and clashed menacingly among themselves, as the warriors of other peoples, after a war with enemies, start civil strife in their homeland in order to quench their bloody thirst even from the veins of the brethren and spend on them the battle fire, inflated by habit. But soon the waves broke into a wide swell, and white stripes of foam, which had recently crowned the crests of the waves, snaked along it. They stretched out like lines on a gloomy, endless page of the sea, like traces of generations on the ocean of life. The very foam disappeared, and the blue of inactivity covered the face of the sea. It was already breathing heavily and intermittently, like a dying one, and, finally, by morning, its soul flew out in a fog, as if transforming it by the fact that everything great on earth breathes only storms and that the death of everything great is wrapped in a shroud of fog, impenetrable equally for the doer, as for the viewer.

Our Argonauts, from certain death, fell into mortal doubt, and although on this sure occasion they became convinced that the expression of lovers and defendants, that doubt is worse than death, was not entirely fair, but their position was not at all enviable. No map, no compass. And why the hell lay out a map in front of them when there is no ability to disassemble it? One Russian seafaring skipper to the question: "Don't you have maps?" - with innocence he answered: "There were, father, and gold-edged, but the guys whipped them, effortlessly in socks!" The compass is another matter; Savely knew how to consult with him: yes, the trouble is that in wedding puffs he forgot him at home! How to be? The wind yesterday drove them to the right, then to the left, spun like a demon before matins, and shuffled all the points and the minds of our swimmers into such a troublemaker that Buffon himself, with his theory of winds, would have lost his eloquence. Saveliy could not think of whether north should be put on the nose or on the back of the head. And the sun, in his opinion, now entered the left ear, and rolled from the right, then into the right, and set in the left. Where to turn? Where to look for Solovetsky? The morning opened like a flower, but the fog swirled - at least spread it on bread! Here pulled a breeze on the left; but he was unfaithful, like a woman of the world, hesitated to and fro, like modern literature, and furrowed the water a little, as if on tiptoe running around the ship so as not to wake the sailors.

Savely held a council with Uncle Yakov.

Solovki is close ahead, - said Alexei. - The whirlwind drove us to the rear, and we ran like a hare from a golden eagle.

Solovki is far in our right hand, - Uncle Yakov asserted - Flurry went in from the right and brought the karbas, like a falcon, to the west.

And it might be true! Savely said. Where is the wind blowing from now?

We're coming from the north! During the day it is hot, during the day the wind blows from the shore; at night it is fresh, at night he tosses and turns home.

Yes, now it is daytime, and to spite you last night the wind ran from the shore, as if from a prison from a chain.

The storm is an individual article, Savely Nikitich! For a whole week it was hot and hot on the earth so that it was not even night; here the heat without a turn fell into the sea, and now the earth has bathed, has caught a cold; now a chill will certainly pull ashore, because the chill has become stronger than the heat.

Uncle Yakov spoke the truth. He did not read why winds occur in the atmosphere, had no idea about the rarefaction of air by the electricity of storms or the equilibrium of gases, but he had a sound mind and experience. Savely was convinced. We decided, as our home-grown sailors say, to brace, that is, turn the sails, and keep to the east. Vyun hissed at the wheel; the karbas swam at half wind. The monotonous lapping of the waves and the fatigue of the previous night put the navigators to sleep. Only Savely did not dare to indulge in a sweet morning dream: he was the owner of the ship, he was the king of this state, knocked down with wooden nails. For his own good and the protection of others, he did not sleep: but he daydreamed. On the fabric of the sail and the fabric of fog passed, danced, flashed vivid images, as if by the month of a magic lantern. He saw how Katerina Petrovna's blond braid was divided into two halves, and wrapped around her forehead twice, and hidden under a handkerchief with a gold border. He also saw the torn cotton curtains of the wedding bed and the crumpled down pillow under the bride's rosy cheek; he saw friends and acquaintances - they feast at his christening. Here is the concern, how to name the first son, whom to call as godfather to the first granddaughter. In a word, a whole crowd of his descendants frolicked around him, and he looked at them tenderly and lovingly, like a writer looks at his literary offspring - small, small, swaddled in calfskin with gold trim, which, he dreams, future eyelids will be babysit. He was already dreaming of grandchildren, I say, forgetting that there was a hungry abyss under him, forgetting that the ship was nothing more than a tree, the sailors were nothing more than people, and that "there are earth rats and water rats," in the words of Shakespeare's Jew Shylock; and the rats ate the Polish King Popiel; so will they let the raznochintsu go?

The sleep and dreams of the citizens of karbas were interrupted terribly and suddenly. Fifty fathoms away, lightning flashed through the fog in the wind, and behind the thunder of the shot, the ball whistled over their heads. Everyone jumped up from their seats: Ivan with a sign of surprise, in brackets of a yawn; Aleksey with a lick from half-drunk mash in a dream; uncle Yakov with a disheveled beard; Captain Savely with a premonition of final ruin. Everyone's ears grew an inch, and everyone's horror poured out in a unanimous cry: "What is this ?!"

Isn't it thunder? - Savely said, making the sign of the cross.

Is it not the ringing of clay Solovetsky bells? Alexei said slyly.

I'll give you such a chime message that your ears will ring until Kasyanov's day! shouted Uncle Yakov. - Nikitich! Left aboard! There is nothing to yawn! These are the English.

A whole flock of goddems buzzed along the path, broken through in the fog by a cannonball, and convinced our people of the certainty of Yakov's words. But the desire to get away from the invisible privateer, taking advantage of the darkness, feathered their hope. Karbas rushed into the wind like a duck frightened by a hunter's gun. But after a minute, any possibility of deliverance disappeared. The fog, evaporating, becoming transparent, pursued the stern. The English cutter, exploding waves and vapors, rolled after the fugitives. A huge boom thrown into the wind, emerging from the mists, seemed to grab them; the shadow of the triangular sail seemed to pierce the stern: it poured cold over the heart of the Russians. The tin pipe blared: "Boat - ahoo! Strike your color (bot! surrender)".

Hands were taken away from the poor things. Escape was not possible. Their weapons are one shotgun and two axes. Meanwhile, the cutter pushed closer and closer, shielding the wind with itself.

Down with your rags! (Down with your rags!) - the trumpet called again. - Put the helm up, damn! (Steering wheel on board, damn it!) Strike, or I "ll run over and sink you! (Surrender, or I will move and sink you!) - With this word, the cutter began to lead to the wind to let the artillery work. Savely is very good He clearly saw that the Englishman could sink him with cannonballs or with a blow from the water-spout, but he was stunned by the thought of captivity and ruin—and when?—in the very height of hope, in the very flower of happiness! , imagining that all his property, all his offspring in pounds, in bundles, in bales, in matting, would be buried in the belly of a robber ship; that instead of Katerina Petrovna’s embrace, the boatswain’s molting awaits him, instead of Mother Russia, some kind of block-shift * correcting the position zealous flashed: he grabbed a rusty shotgun and bam - right on the side of the cutter!

* An old ship, without weapons, standing in the port.

Fire! (Fire!) - it was heard on it.

The flames of the cannonade splashed over the heads of the Russians, and the chain shot cut off both masts. The fallen sails covered the karbas, and before ours got out from under this net, six armed sailors jumped into the ship and bandaged them. Resistance would be insane. Fate is over. Savely with his entire team is a prisoner of war; his karbas, with his cargo, is the booty of an English privateer, recognized in this honorable title by the government and supplied from him with a letter, lettre de marque, and iron cannonballs for the lawful robbery of the enemies of Great Britain.

For a long time already, and a lot, and eloquently wrote Messrs. publicists against corsairry, privatization, piracy, privateering, or simply sea robbery, covered by a flag; but as such a song was always sung by those who could not rob themselves, and not by those who dared to rob, then all meetings of scientists and the offended usually ended like a council of mice - they did not find a young man who would tie a bell around the neck of a cat, England. The funniest thing of all is that Napoleon, who did not recognize any rights except those that dangle like a lanyard on a sword - Napoleon, who, wherever he could, spoke in twenty-four-pound dialectic, stooped to humble prose, talking about privateers. He very seriously and witty argued that the maritime people's law is not a law at all; which is not similar either to European customs or to the notions of the century to rob and captivate the defenseless merchants of a hostile nation at sea, just like private property civilians on the shore; that, paying for food supplies to a peasant and preserving life, freedom and property even in a city taken in battle, is it not inhuman, is it not humiliating to take away one, and the other, and the third, how soon it is on the ship? Does salt water change the color of concepts to such an extent that what is contemptible and lawless on land becomes laudable and lawful on the sea? He was sentenced that privateers and cruisers should be limited only to the inspection of merchant ships and the confiscation of military shells alone. The British said that this was very fair, and they did not stop taking, catching, robbing all French and French-allied ships.

After the peace of Tilsit, the turn fell on us sinners. We began to suck on the beetroot, telling ourselves that it was sugar, and it was expensive to dress in lousy cloth woven on the Continental system. But then we sharpened our incorruptible and incorruptible bayonets and instead of coffee drank the hope of imminent revenge. It broke out in 1812. But one way or another, Savely Nikitich is a prisoner. The English, as everyone knows, are an affectionate, affable people, to the point that more than one paragraph of the law of the sea was printed on the sides of him and his comrades, as long as it moved to the deck of His British Majesty, this floating soil of habeas corpus *, setting foot on which, every foreigner enjoys unlimited freedom to wear his nose on weekdays and holidays without restriction. We have seen what they did to Napoleon, who had the simplicity to surrender voluntarily to their hospitality and generosity; you can judge how they accepted the Russian philistines, who dared to run away from their rightness and even wound an oak cutter under the flag of George III with a shot in the nose. Le cas etait pendable is a hanging case, as the French say, and Savell would probably have had to dance a jig at the end of the yardarm if he had been caught by English discipline after dinner; but, fortunately, the captivity of karbas happened in the first bottle of the day **, and therefore the captain of the privateer satisfied his anger by releasing a dozen exemplary abuses against his brother, standart jurements - God damn your eyes! plus a few: You scoundrels, ruffians and batbed dogs! (swindlers, loafers, bearded dogs!) Savely and Uncle Yakov, who had become fed up with English greetings like daily biscuits, found this to be in the order of things. But Alexei tried several times to free his right hand from the ropes in order to turn the answer directly to the captain's face; Ivan spat twice as often.

* The act of inviolability of the person (lat.).

** In sea overseas novels, I tea, more than once it happened to you to read: "fourth flask", "eighth flask". This is a hoax; it simply means that the sailors have had three bottles, that they are already drinking the eighth. This clock-measurement, self-moving and self-recording, is very convenient and healthy: at noon they overturn all the bottles at once, and this is called: checking chronometers. - Scientific note.

But in essence the English are not an evil people, and if you subtract from them suspiciousness, rudeness, intolerable pride and proud intolerance of everything foreign, you will find that they are the most amiable people in the world. The heart of an Englishman is a coconut: it is necessary to cut through with an ax to the core, but on the other hand, inside is not a fistula, like a Frenchman, but a refreshing juice. Outwardly, he acts according to his oppressive, selfish, colonial laws; at home - according to the charter of the soul. Such was the red-cheeked, fat-bellied Captain Turnip, the commander of the cutter, rude in face, hospitable in line. Irritated by the resistance of the insignificant Russian shell, he rudely received his guests; but when the matter ended successfully, when all the bales and kegs jumped over the side into his hold, when the upper part of the karbas itself was chopped up for firewood, and the bottom went to the bottom, when he looked at Savely's papers, having robbed everything clean beforehand, - this is - judicially, I love the young man for the custom, - and announced that the karbas was a legitimate prize, a smile smoothed his morocco face; the furrowed eyebrows parted, and he, affectionately hitting Savely on the shoulder, threw him the most tarred of greetings that bloom on deck:

Have a head, boy, and never fear! (Raise your head and don't be afraid!) *

* Heave a head - in the marine sense, almost the same as ours: in places! quietly! - that is, be careful, listen.

Savely, according to popular expression, famously learned how to speak English. Savely was angry, and therefore, without hesitation, slipped his answer through his teeth to this encouragement of the English work:

God damn you, sea dog, and let the devil be your flagship! Don't be afraid? Why should I be afraid now, when you have robbed me to the soul.

Never mind! (Forget it!) Turnip objected with a smile.

The thought of prey beat away the annoyance at the scolding.

The devil will sooner forget to take your soul than I will forget the happiness that you have taken from me!

Oh, you ungrateful biped! Didn't I give you life and a barrel of kvass, with this unbaptized drink, without which no Russian can exist? Didn't I do it? Watch, boy, did I not?*

* Isn't it, boy? (English)

You have made my life and kvass worse than vinegar. Do not regale me with such a gnawed life. I am not a dog to jump on a chain and lick your whip. You drowned my karbas, drown me too.

If you drown in the sea, it will turn you into corned beef for the fish: sorry for you! If I drown you in vodka, it will turn into a tincture of stupidity: sorry for the vodka! You, friend, are a dashing sailor when you set sail on the sea in a snuffbox: I cannot forbid myself to respect such courage. So tell me, what are you angry about? If you were stronger than me, you would do the same to me that I did to you! Wouldn't it be better to cool your fever by pouring a bucket on you cold water and drown your grief by pouring two glasses of rum into you?

Hops are a wonderful lubricant for pleasure and grief: it sculpts the painted tile of the first just as tightly to the heart as the jagged cobblestone of the second. Savely for a long time refused to drink, pushed away the glass with liquid oblivion that flew up to his lips in a friendly manner; finally took a sip, grimacing; again and again, and now, with each sip, his grief melted like sugar in a punch, and finally he thought: "As long as he himself is alive, happiness has not died!" And he cheerfully looked at the divine light, as if choosing from which edge to start it. He broke off each of his comrades a piece of his own cheerfulness and held out his hand to the captain.

So long ago! he said. - Be humble and work, so you won't complain about us. God willing, the Russians will rise with us at the same time against this robber, Bonaparte, and then you will again see your homeland. Although it is icy, everything will not melt until then! ..

"And Katerina Petrovna?" thought Savely with a sigh. "Women melt faster than the snow."

The captain dipped his hands into his pockets and began to pace the deck. Perhaps he thought of his Fanny too.

This captain served first on the East Indian ships - on the Indians, Indianen, as the English say. Then he was on a semi-salary; then he was denied this also for a long absence. He, you will see, reasoned that it is better to eat spices and sweets than to transport them from the banks of the Ganges, and got married. Then he learned, however, that all the sweetness of the marital rite consists in potatoes and a piece of beef. This touched him so much that he grew fat with grief, and for scattering and profits he embarked on trade. The insidious element, that is, the sea, and not his wife, however, would not have lured him from the shore if, by an accident, part of his property in goods had not fallen into the hands of a French privateer. From that moment on, in his own person, he declared war on Napoleon and, driven by love for the fatherland and for his pocket, decided to compensate for the loss in the same way that he came to him. He equipped a small one-masted ship, hired a crew, bought himself four fluffs - after all, in England they are sold in the flea market, and sometimes you can buy a whole battery from the bearer - he asked the government for a ticket to show the war in miniature and set off to churn the sea. He succeeded in capturing some boat with smuggling and several unfortunate fishing boats in Canada. This produced him in own opinion to the heroes of the red flag, and he, having heard that a small squadron was being equipped in the Arctic Sea to search over the Swedes and Russians, decided to follow her, like a chakalka after a tiger. He figured that the Swedish whalers and Russian philistines were more capable of him than the French corsairs, and that by attacking by surprise, he could soon profit from prey. He weighed anchor and circled Norway along with the royal flotilla.

Although Russia’s break with England to please Napoleon was not sincere on both sides, all the seas that the British consider their highways and country roads, high-ways and by-ways, were closed for us by a living chain of ships. Their cruisers spied in the Baltic Sea and in 1811 appeared in the White Sea, with the pious intention of plundering the Solovetsky Monastery. Having learned, however, that the garrison and artillery were reinforced there, they did not dare to attack and returned. The brig alone penetrated as far as Kola, but was in a hurry to slip away from there with a small booty for the good of the mind, when he was caught in a storm, separated from his flagship and stumbled upon Savelya's karbas. Now he ruled his run homeward, and already three days have passed since the day of the captivity of the karbas. During these three days, Captain Turnip settled in with his recruits. Captain Turnip was a good sailor in his knowledge of the sea, but very poor in his laziness. married life spoiled him: he reluctantly parted with a feast and bed. A hard pudding and a soft pillow were for him, of course, with an admixture of Madeira and grog, the first bliss in the world: he could not imagine idols except in the form of a gravy boat, a bottle or a down jacket. As a result, he was much more fond of spending time in his cozy cabin than on deck. What to do, gracious sovereigns! He was accustomed to a homely, decent life: he was a married man.

However, our single 19th century is also whimsical, like a married nobleman. Comfort* - the inscription of his shield. True, he invented steam cannons for enemies, droshkys for friends without a favor; on the other hand, he also invented the seat at the back of a carriage for servants, sidewalks for pedestrians, collars with springs for dogs, rubber corsets for beauties, waterproof raincoats for warriors, bone soup for the poor, for the rich, imperishable soup that will withstand the flood without losing its taste, invented the brazier , which roasts a steak in your pocket, and water closets for bedrooms. He invented it... Why didn't he invent it! Everything - from a machine to grind stones in a bladder to a French razor, a guillotine that takes your head off so easily and quickly that you don't have time to sneeze, and to many other such improvements. Tell me, is it possible to be more caring, more obliging than our age? Would you like to talk to me about the ancient sun, about ageless nature, about the pleasure of bivouacs, about the health of rotten crackers and the pleasantness of dirty linen?.. Nonsense, sir! I love the arts and industry. I want to live and die by the light of gas lamps, on a mattress filled with fragrant air, in gloves with springs, with a rubber back, with a heart not even wet with tears. I am a Russian of my age, dear sir! I love newspapers and omnibuses... I love comfort. Your most humble.

* Comfort (eng).

Captain Turnip, as an Englishman who would rather impoverish half of his fellow citizens and infect the other, rather than leave his comfortable prisons and hospitals empty, loved comfort as much as I did, and, as was his custom, on the third evening went to the side, leaving the helmsman behind. to stay awake, and Russian captives to sleep on bare boards, under sail instead of a blanket. The night was lovely beyond metaphor. Indeed, the nights of the north are charming: it is a day in the moonlight, it is the pouring of the dawn of the evening into the dawn of the morning. The opal skies slightly sparkle with stars, and when they drop their rays into blue waves, the frisky waves catch them, take them away from each other, divide, crush their sparks, want to hide them in their shaky crystal, and then pimple them playfully. Your gaze far pierces the clear sky, as if intensifying to read the high, divine thought poured over it, plunges deep into the abyss of the sea, unraveling the wondrous mystery buried in it. You will say that these heavens flying away from the gaze with their diamond colors, with their rainbow around the moon, with bizarre images of clouds, are imagination, and the sea with its murmuring abyss, with shipwrecks, with stony plants, with corpses, with monsters at the bottom, with a phosphorescent sheen on top - human memory?

Savely did not unravel either the thoughts or the secrets of creation, but they took place in him without his knowledge. A longing for his homeland gnawed at his heart, a longing that could only be surpassed by an hour of separation from life. Take the fish out of the water, put the bird under the air pump and tell them "Live!" Tear a man away from his fatherland and then marvel that he is languishing, bored. Savel could not sleep at the housewarming party. He slowly raised his head...

The wind was fresh but steady. The fixed sails were inflated; the cutter, leaning to one side, rapidly cut the waves, and they scattered on his chest in silver ears. The bursts sounded in a measured fret, and the jet, sliding along the sides, merged into curls behind the wheel and whispered, sang a dream to all living things. Submissive to this vocation, the helmsman dozed over the tiller and only occasionally, out of habit, grumbled: "Steady! Steady!" (Quickly!) The three sailors on duty were already snoring, crouching on the nets; the rest were all sleeping in bunks, downstairs in their cabin.

And suddenly a fiery thought shot through Savely's head and flowed through his entire body. It seemed to him that someone shouted in his ear: "Get the cutter!" He pushed Uncle Yakov: he woke up.

Do you see? he said in a whisper, pointing to the sleeping Englishmen.

I see, - answered Jacob, looking around.

Do you want freedom? Savely asked.

Do you want death? - asked, in turn, Yakov.

Death is the same will. It is better to die in a fur coat than to live naked. It is better to give your bones to God's sea than to drag them across a foreign land. Is it with me, Uncle Yakov? Otherwise, I’ll do a mischief alone, but I won’t give myself into shackles.

Listen, daring head: I love Mother Rus' no less than you, I will not betray you. Just think - where are we and how many of us?

Savely pointed out to him two hatches, openings leading below the deck, then to the rows of boarding guns hanging on the nets, and whispered something in his ear quietly, softly.

With God blessing! Uncle Jacob said.

There was nothing to consult with the other two Russians: they only had to order, and they are ready for the heat and the whirlpool. Savely crept up to the side, unhooked the ax and went straight to the helmsman. He half-eyed looked at him, pulled the steering cable * and muttered his own: "Steady! Steady!" It was the last one. Savely smashed his skull to his shoulders; the unfortunate fell over the tiller, speechless, and the blood flowed like a river on the deck. Three Russians grabbed one sleeping Englishman and threw him overboard into the sea. But the other two Englishmen woke up from the noise, seized to fight and, only wounded, succumbed to force. The hungry abyss noisily accepted them into its bosom, but did not suddenly swallow them up. A plaintive, piercing cry now arose, then fell silent over the waves, and finally everything merged into the silence of the grave, into the quiet voice of the sea. Meanwhile, the mortal clique of the struggle aroused the eight sailors sleeping below; but the Russians had already managed to slide lattice covers over the holes and fix them on top with bolts. As soon as the English dared to try to raise the roof of their trap, three loaded blunderbusses scared them away. The hatch to the captain's cabin was also boarded up before he shook the dream tripled with Madeira from his eyelashes.

* Rope that controls the steering wheel.

The battle! he shouted menacingly, hearing the extraordinary turmoil on deck. - The battle! - he repeated with the application of hundreds of abuse; but the battle did not appear, although the captain's spells could have called all the devils out of hell. The poor fellow, a boy of about twelve, the captain's messenger, was deprived this time of the inevitable kick that served as a sign of exclamation in the vocative case - fight! He gave him incredible speed of movement. "Fight, bring a bottle! Fight, call the boatswain!" - and a kick in the ass, and he flew up the stairs like a falcon. Yes! kick is the first letter of the English discipline, of which the last is the loop at the end of the yardarm.

Seeing that the battle was not going to get his portion, the captain jumped out of bed in anger and rushed to the door; they were locked up.

What does it mean?! he cried, shaking the bolts.

This means that you are my prisoner, - answered Savely through the hatch. - Half of your people in the sea; the other is crammed into the deck. Give up!

So that I, a lieutenant of the royal service, surrender to a bearded man? Never! Never! I'll drill the bottom and sink you! shouted Turnip.

I will set fire to the ship and blow you into the air, - objected Savely.

But the ship was neither sunk nor burned. It was only turned back and ran towards Rus' with the same half-wind. Savely steered and oversaw the captain's hatch. Two others stood on watch, by the hatch of the sailor's cabin, one was allowed to sleep. All of them were hung with weapons. It would be hard for them to manage the sails if the wind changed or strengthened: but it blew evenly and constantly, and Alexei, looking merrily ahead, preened himself and said: "Know ours!" The silence was interrupted only occasionally by the scolding of the English locked in a cage and by the captain's incantations. Finally, he too fell silent. Like a true philosopher, he, having taken a triple charge of rum, fell asleep, defeated, but not defeated.

The next day, the Russians made the sad discovery that they did not have a crumb of rusk: everything edible was stored downstairs. The victors could starve to death before reaching the shore. The British did not give up and did not give anything. Fortunately, chance balanced the calamity of both warring nations. The British soon rolled out the rest of the barrels of water onto the deck to place under the roof of tender prey. Negotiations began.

Give us bread! the Russians said.

Give us water! - said the English.

We won't give it, the British answered, until you let us out.

We won't give it, - the Russians answered, - surrender.

And the parliamentarians dispersed from the hatch.

But hunger and thirst settled the truce. Popular ambition fell silent before the cry of the stomach: the exchange was established. For each piece of cracker and corned beef, given to spare, mugs of water were measured for half a thirst.

I would like you to choke on that piece! - said the captain, sticking a deer tongue through the opening of the hatch.

I would like you to drink only water forever! - Savely said, giving him a measure of non-wine moisture. - Perhaps you would have wised up from this post!

You are a robber! the captain grumbled.

I am your student, objected Savely, console yourself! I did to you what you would do to me if you were stronger. Are these not your words?

The captain said that nothing in the world is more stupid than such consolations.

Cutter swam and swam to Rus'.

This cutter was an amusing and unprecedented phenomenon in politics. It was no longer a status in statu*, but a status super statum**, a state riding a state, victors without losers, and vanquished who do not recognize victors; it was two tiers of the Babylonian pillar, launched into the water. Downstairs they roared: "Long live George III forever!" Above they shouted: "Hurrah for father Tsar Alexander Pavlovich!" English goddems and Russian unprinted scribbles met on the fly. This, however, did not prevent the cutter from running at ten knots an hour, and then they saw our low-lying coast of the homeland, and now, with full tide, with full wind, he ran into the mouth of the Dvina, not answering the demands of the fire department, despite the fight of the bar. Savely did not want to delay even a minute and, knowing that he would be forgiven for all the omissions of forms, he rolled up the river without any flag. Customs and Brandwachten boats, delayed by the bar, were exhausted in pursuit of him. Customs and the fire department went crazy: what if this madman is an Englishman! well, if he decides to bombard Solombola, burn the ships, burn the city. Horse-ridden riders galloped headlong to Arkhangelsk, and alarm spread along the entire coast before the prize cutter showed up.

* state within a state (lat.).

** state over state (lat.).

An armed boat, however, met him on the road, interrogated him, congratulated him, and the turmoil of fears turned into a turmoil of joy. Before the snowball reached Arkhangelsk, it grew uphill. All the gossips, throwing their caps over their shoulders, ran from gate to gate - is it time to look into the yard! - and they said that their relative (here everyone became related to him), Savely Nikitich, attacked a hundred-gun English ship, scattered in all directions, surrounded him with his karbas, pulled out the rudder with my own hands and let's beat the English right and left; were forced to surrender, adversaries! Now he's taking it here for the show! Everyone gasped, everyone asked, everyone told nonsense; nobody knew the truth.

A loud cheer from the embankment greeted the approaching cutter; hats flew into the air, chebots into the water; in a fit of national pride, the people pushed each other with elbows and knees. Everyone pushed forward, everyone wanted to be the first to look at the daring fellow countryman. Savely almost lost his mind: he ran around the deck, hugged his companions, knocked on the doors of Turnip.

Give up! he shouted. - We're already in Arkhangelsk.

Don't give up bearded man! he answered.

When they landed and threw the gangway, the governor was the first to meet Savely, pressed him to his chest, called him a fine fellow. Savely's heart sank with joy, tears gushed from his eyes.

Your Excellency! .. - he answered. - Your Excellency... I am Russian.

Captain Turnip stepped ashore with great dignity, handed his dagger to the governor, and went undercover into the city, singing:

Rule, Britania, the waves!

(Own, Britannia, the seas!)

Everyone laughed.

Do I need to tell? Savely did not go to Solovki: he went to church with his dear Katerina Petrovna. The sovereign emperor, having learned about the feat of Nikitin, which was reminiscent of the feat of Dolgoruky under Peter, sent the Archangel hero a sign of a military order and ordered the cargo of a prize privateer to be sold in favor of him and his comrades.

This is not a fiction, Savely Nikitin is still alive, we still respect him; and if you meet in Arkhangelsk a cheerful man of about fifty, in a Russian caftan, with a St. George cross on his chest, bow to him: this is Savely Nikitin.

Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky - Sailor Nikitin, read text

See also Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky - Prose (stories, poems, novels ...):

Assaults
The Tale of 1613 Dedicated to Ivan Petrovich Zhukov Chapter I In the Field...

Night on the ship
(From the notes of a guards officer on his way back to Russia after the Kam...

A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky

Sailor Nikitin

A sail, a sail - a promised price to hope!

Her nation, flag? What speaks the

She walks the waters like a thing of life

And seems to dare the celements to strife.

Who would not brave the battle fire,

To move the monarch of her peopled deck?

* Ship, ship - hope for a prize! What nation is he, under what flag? what does the telescope say? He walks on the waves as if animated; he seems to be challenging the elements. Who is afraid of fire, water, just to walk like a sovereign on this crowded deck? (English). - Byron. (Author's translation. - Ed.)

In 1811, in the month of July, a small karbas went out to sea from the mouth of the Northern Dvina. I must tell you that in the month of July 1811, just like in the present year 1834, to which we lived by the grace of God and according to the assurance of the calendar of the Academy, the old Northern Dvina poured a huge column of her waters directly into the Northern Ocean, arguing twice on a day with a tide that most shamelessly invaded its cherished whirlpools and turned its sweet, noble trickles into a common pickle, suitable only for cod. I am obliged to explain to you, as a duty of literary conscience, that in those days, as hitherto, a ship was called karbas, eighteen paces long, six wide, with two single-pole masts, half-stitched with roots, half knocked down with nails, of which hardly a fifth were iron. Decks were usually not supposed to be on the karbas, and on the stern and on the bow small sheds formed konurki, where, on heaps of luggage, only the Russian back, and only one back, could cozy up, twisting into three deaths. As a result, as you will see for yourself, white light and colorless water above and below, right and left, could run into the middle of the vessel and live without datum, duty-free. This vessel, or, to put it more politely, this ship, - and the word "ship", mind you, I derive from the "box", and the box from "warp", and warp from "hump", and the hump from "mountain": I hope that it is clear; some foundling etymologists derive "ship" from some Greek word that I don't know, and don't want to know, but it's slander, it's a lie, it's a slander invented by some walnut seller; I, as you will see, am a native Russian, I come from a Russian root and grew up on Russian roots, with the exception of biquadratic ones, which were too tough for me, and therefore, I’ll tell you as a secret, I can’t stand anything overseas and don’t believe in anything foreign, - so, this ship, that is, this karbas, was very much like a lodia, or a boat, or a boat of the ancient Normans, and perhaps even the Argonauts, and proved the commendable constancy of the Russians in ship architecture, but at the same time he proved that truth, that we, with clumsy karbass, inherited from our Slavo-Russian ancestors a courage that would do honor to any hot pressed, force recruited sailor dancing to the whistle of man of war * on the polished deck of an English battleship, or a arrogant Yankee ** running to fasten a bayonet - bolt on the yardarm of the American shuner.

* military (English).

** In derision, the British call North Americans yankee.

Yes, sir! When you think that a Russian peasant industrialist, a navigator, on some piece of wood, on a shitik, on a karbas, in a leather canoe, without a compass, without maps, with a slice of bread in his pocket, swam, went to the Grumant - that's what they call Novaya Earth - to Kamchatka from Okhotsk, to America from Kamchatka, so the heart laughs, and goosebumps run through the skin. Girdle around the world? Kopek! Listen to him talk about his travels, about which the French and English would not sing in songs, and the bells would not ring, and you will be convinced that labors and dangers are a toy for him. "We climbed to the Gebritskys and from there to the pass to Brazil, waved to the golden kingdom. From Brazil we pushed to Kamchatka, and from there, Sitka was just a stone's throw away!" Give me such daring men - and with them at least send for living water! Ocean hit? Let's scoop out the ocean with our caps! Sand sea? Like a tavlinka, we sniff it out! Ice mountains? Instead of a lollipop, we'll chew it! Where is madam Impossibility gone? Come out - maybe we'll need some soles! Under whom a good horse, perhaps, suits, the forest is not a forest, the river is not a river: wherever they jump - the road, wherever they turn around - space. On a whale? - so on a whale - what a sight! Sharpen with a toothpick! For a polar bear? we will kill with a click; and at the red hour, do not tuck under the hand of the evil one. It’s not the first time for us to forge nails on his teeth, to put a ring in his nose. To tell the truth, the hare is heavy on his feet; it is difficult to shake it; but as it goes, you won’t catch up with self-propelled guns. Where does he lazily say the first "as?". But when, after many: "Yes, what do I need it for! Yes, what do I need it for! We live like this; somehow we will shine through!" - he will get to "something, let's try!" yes, "maybe we'll do it," so give up, make way: stop and remember your name! He will outwit any German in the pulpit, beat the Frenchman in the field, and manage to do better than any Englishman in the factory. Don't believe? Plunge only into our literature, dare to read from beginning to end fiery articles about immortal cuckoo clocks, about the influence of native pasta on morality and about the education of virgin tobacco, articles so fiery that it is impossible to read them without an asbestos fire jacket - and you will be convinced that literary geniuses - self-cutters in Russia are as common as dried mushrooms in Lent, that we are more learned than scientists, for we have learned that science is nonsense; that we write better than all of Europe, because in our writings no one is killed, except for common sense.

But to the point. In 1811, not a single steamboat had ever frightened the fish people in the Russian rivers with its noisy wheels, and therefore the Dvina fish fearlessly stuck out their heads to admire the pitch-black karbas and those who ruled it. Here are the physiological details I received from one of the eyewitnesses, pikes: despite the Arkhangelsk salt and its unusual journey in the sledge, the style of this pike is so flowery, as if it ate the writers of all dark, colorful and blue fairy tales; one must think that objects, reflected in a thousand facets of fish eyes, produce an extraordinary variety of impressions in their brain; original sample attached.

River, - fish always begin their speech from their fatherland, from their element: prudent fish! in this they do not in the least follow the poetic writers, who are most fond of talking about what they know least - the river flowed a little; the ship rolled quickly, guided by the current and the wind; gently sloping shores imperceptibly flowed past it, and if here and there the ships anchored here and there had not rendered the ship’s run like vertical pillars, then the swimmers in the karbas might have thought that they were motionless: the surrounding tundras were so monotonously empty, so silently dead. At that time, sugar and rope factories were not yet visible on the banks of the Dvina, and not a single shipyard was preparing to throw into the water the young skeletons of ships not yet dressed in oak flesh. In the whole space from Solombol to the mouth they did not meet a single living soul, although the multi-colored moss was covered with an orange cloudberry ...

Excellent antiseptic! - says my friend, a doctor. - Nature always places the antidote near the poison; As far as I know, cloudberries are now a branch of trade in the Pridvinsk region: they are exported for the English fleet in thousands of fortieth barrels.

Cloudberry, spread out in bizarre patterns, like a veil of a northern beauty...

It would be better to say, like Russian chintz, - says one married landowner, - because Russian home-made calicos are just like cloudberries in the swamp.

The fish blows its nose and continues:

Only a lone crane, the king of the desert, roamed there like a zoologist...

"Seafarer Nikitin" by Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev-Marlinsky - beautiful story about the courage of ordinary people, about their heroism, fearlessness, who can defeat enemies only thanks to their irrepressible thirst for life, ingenuity and intelligence. The story does not reflect the inner experiences and torments of the characters in all their depth. But because of this, the brightness of love and the strength of life only benefit. The story is based on real events that happened in 1810.

Savely Nikitich - main character story, the legitimate owner of the karbas, a young landowner who independently made a good name for himself, raised a small capital, established trade, and acquired a ship. He himself defines himself as a person with hands and a head on his shoulders, while not a dry hand and not an empty head. His trade is going well, he has bills, a small loan and cash with a thousand. With such goodness and a light young heart, it is not a sin to get married.

The bride Katerina reciprocated, but her father demanded from Saveliy that he earn a little more money before the Savior for his wife to eat and for the kids in the teeth. Then you can play a wedding. With that, Savely set off on his karbas. Katerina saw him off with a heavy heart, and the young man himself was saddened. But the sea and nature with their healing hand erases grief, repentance and vague thoughts.

Uncle Yakov, Alyosha and Ivan accompanied Savely. The hot sun in the evening was replaced by bad weather. Clouds quickly clouded the sky above the karbas, shafts with gray tops overtook the ship. Concentrated, the men scooped up water and fought the storm, the living ocean, which decided to overcome the small boat. But everyone had their own reason for life, which means that nature can be defeated. The human heart is ready to quickly say goodbye to fear as soon as the trouble recedes. And as the storm retreated from the side, laughter began to ring over the water.

But the sea is fraught with more than one danger. As soon as it began to get light, a flash of light lit up the space, there was a roar and the ball flew over the ship. The English cutter attacked the Russian karbas, overtook those fleeing on the waves, and the merchants were taken prisoner. But English carelessness cost the captain and his crew dearly. The indefatigable Russian spirit of Savely immediately found a way to capture the cutter.

The English captain Turnippe and his entire crew in a few hours found themselves under the rule of Russian merchants, whose courage could not but inspire respect. Nevertheless, two sea spirits clashed when it turned out that the Russians had no food, and the British were left under castles without water. But common sense and natural instincts allowed them to agree. The exchange was made with mutual wishes speedy death and yet mutual human respect was not lost throughout the journey.

The ship confidently approached the native Russian shores. And as the ship raced through the waves, so the rumors about the Russian merchant rolled through Mother Rus'. The people were worried when the mast of the enemy ship appeared, but they met Saveliy and his team, learned the details and made him a real hero. The merits of the tradesman were also appreciated by the Sovereign himself, marking him with an order for bravery and courage. Yes, and life rewarded Savely with the respect of the people and a good faithful wife.

A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, having told a simple story about the courage of Russian sailors, has not lost its unique style and diluted the story with interesting arguments that entertain the reader. The author depicted the ocean and nature as separate heroes, which in the story have their own character and destiny.

The book “Nikitin the Sailor” was voiced by Lyubov Koneva, who skillfully presented the main line and at the same time did not forget to highlight the author’s reasoning and his communication with the reader. Celebration, sadness, courage, determination and other emotions are conveyed perfectly. Thanks to the skill of the announcer, listening to an audiobook is pleasant and convenient.

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Audiobook duration: 1.5 hour

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Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev (1797-1837), who took the pseudonym Marlinsky, was undoubtedly a talented and extremely popular writer in his time, and later unfairly forgotten. Even V. Belinsky, who did not like him, called Marlinsky the first Russian narrator and the "instigator" of the national story.

Completely unfairly forgotten

It is clear why this writer was not studied in Soviet schools: Belinsky did not like him, who accused the writer of pseudo-romanticism. The work in question is quite voluminous, it contains many author's digressions. Therefore, we offer you summary. "The Sailor Nikitin" is a story dedicated to ordinary sailors of the Russian North, a clear evidence that the writer was not at all alien to realism.

IN the best works, relating to the mature period of creativity, A. A. Bestuzhev reaches true heights, although he calls himself a beggar, comparing with his idol Victor Hugo. The author of the story "Seafarer Nikitin", a summary of which can be expressed in one phrase - the story about was not at all happy about his amazing popularity. This only speaks in his favor.

Happy self-sufficient person

Contemporaries attributed A. A. Bestuzhev to a small number of lucky people who lived in harmony with themselves and the world. He was doing what he loved (which he did brilliantly), but he did not imagine himself a man who was kissed by God in the crown of the head. Such was the brilliant, well-educated, witty and ironic, desperate optimist Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. "Seafarer Nikitin" - a true story, first published in the "Library for Reading" in 1834. The audience accepted it enthusiastically, because they were looking forward to each new work of this author. The stories were not only read to holes, quotes from them were memorized. And this is absolutely understandable, because, having read this sketch from the life of merchant sailors of the Russian North in our time, you discover a witty author whose phrases you want to write out right away. He literally gives a couple of words an idea about any hero.

Wonderfully portrayed characters

How good is the captive captain of an English ship, who, going down to the shore of the Arkhangelsk port and going to jail, sings "Rule, Britannia, by the seas." The writer Marlinsky described the hero's neighbor Katerina Petrovna very well. The navigator Nikitin loved her, and for him she was "charming, like all Katerinas together, and pretty, like none of the Katerinas." Literally in every phrase there is a subtle remark about clothes, customs, the state of the Russian merchant fleet - about everything. And all this is described with love for everything domestic (right at the beginning of the story, the writer openly emphasizes his dislike for everything foreign) and with kind irony, and not with poisonous sarcasm.

Good story with a happy ending

It can be regretted that in our time, a full reading is increasingly preferred to a summary. "Nikitin the Sailor" loses a lot in this: the charm of the work, subtle observations and wonderful irony of the author disappear. The author is gone.

However, the story is like this. A young, daring, ruddy merchant-navigator fell in love with the “brown-haired” beautiful neighbor, whose father agreed to the wedding only after another successful trip by Savely Nikitin to Solovki - to earn a pretty penny. The groom immediately sets off, but is captured with his comrades by the British, who made a hole in the bottom of Savely's longboat, having previously taken the goods, and abandoned the sailors on the deck in the open air. Marlinsky amazingly describes the nature of the North. The night sky above the deck with the prisoners is poetic and unique: opal with barely visible stars, of course, our summary cannot describe it.

"Nikitin the Sailor" ends with four simple Russian peasants capturing an English ship with a superior number (12 people with a captain and a boy-boy) of well-trained sailors who were going to capture the Solovetsky Fortress. The ship was turned to their native shores and brought to where they were already greeted with joyful cries by the whole city. It all ended with a wedding.

Wealth left beyond the brief

This is the summary. "The Sailor Nikitin", as noted above, is a story. It is full of amazing sketches, which is worth only the description of the sailor Ivan! You can read it briefly, but it would be better to read it in full. After all, the summary does not include either Russian sailors, sprinkled with sayings and sayings, or a description of the historical events that led to the war between England and Russia as a result of Napoleon's policy (the story describes the events of 1811). Remain on the sidelines funny situations on the ship, when the captured British had bread and corned beef, and the Russians had a barrel of

There are many things that make reading the story simply necessary: ​​apart from joy, it will not bring any other feelings. Especially since it sounds very modern now. It shows the eternal neglect and underestimation of the "civilized" Europe of the Russian "bearded men". A. A. Bestuzhev tells that our compatriots covered inconceivable sea distances on fragile boats and did not boast of their exploits in any way, and in general they did not consider them to be such. Foreigners, as Marlinsky writes, will sing of their every step in verses and poems. This wonderful writer- a real patriot, not angry at his homeland, which put him in prison and exile, then to the Caucasus, where he died in a skirmish with the highlanders. Perhaps all of his work does not reach the work of N.V. Gogol, but still he is completely unfairly forgotten.