“Now, that’s a disaster,” cried he, getting up on his feet, and stretching himself. “Still, a man doesn’t starve in four days. I’ve cast my bread on the waters. It has evidently gone down the stream. Now, what’s to hinder a man escaping by means of that watercourse? Still, if he did, what would be the use? He’d float out into the Baltic Sea, and if able to swim round the rock, would merely be compelled to knock at the front door and beg admission again. No, by Jove, there’s the boat, but they probably guard it night and day, and a man in the water would have no chance against one in the boat. Perhaps there’s gratings between the cells. Of course, there’s bound to be. No one would leave the bed of a stream clear for any one to navigate. Prisoners would visit each other in their cells, and that’s not allowed in any respectable prison. I wonder if there’s any one next door on either side of me. An iron grid won’t keep out the sound. I’ll try,” and going again to the margin of the watercourse, he shouted several times as loudly as he could, but only a sepulchral echo, as if from a vault, replied to him. “I imagine the adjoining cells are empty. No enjoyable companionship to be expected here. I wonder if they’ve got the other poor devils up from the steamer yet. I’ll sit down on the bench and listen.” He could have found the bench and shelf almost immediately by groping round the wall, but he determined to exercise his sense of direction, to pit himself against the darkness. “I need not hurry,” he said, “I may be a long time here.” In his mind he had a picture of the cell, but now that he listened to the water it seemed to have changed its direction, and he found he had to rearrange this mental picture, and make a different set of calculations to fit the new position. Then he shuffled slowly forward with hands outstretched, but he came to the wall, and not to the bench. Again he mapped out his route, again endeavored, and again failed. “This is bewildering,” he muttered. “How the darkness baffles a man. For the first time in my life I appreciate to the full the benediction of God’s command, ‘Let there be light.’” He stood perplexed for a few moments, and, deeply thinking, his hands automatically performed an operation as the servants of habit. They took from his pocket his cigarette case, selected a tube of tobacco, placed it between his lips, searched another pocket, brought out a match-box, and struck a light. The striking of the match startled Lermontoff as if it had been an explosion; then he laughed, holding the match above his head, and there at his feet saw the loaf of black bread. It seemed as if somebody had twisted the room end for end. The door was where he thought the stream was, and thus he learned that sound gives no indication of direction to a man blindfolded. The match began to wane, and feverishly he lit his cigarette.