Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral TalesTolstoy, Leo, graf
General
Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
When he came to a village, he asked the village officer to look out for
an old man and bring him to the house where he stayed. Eliséy did not
come there for the night. Efím marched on, and asked everybody whether
they had seen a bald-headed old man. No one had seen him. Efím was
surprised and walked on.
"We shall meet somewhere in Odessa," he thought, "or on the boat," and
then he stopped thinking about it.
On the road he fell in with a pilgrim. The pilgrim, in calotte, cassock,
and long hair, had been to Mount Athos, and was now going for the second
time to Jerusalem. They met at a hostelry, and they had a chat and
started off together.
They reached Odessa without any accident. They waited for three days for
a ship. There were many pilgrims there, and they had come together from
all directions. Again Efím asked about Eliséy, but nobody had seen him.
Efím provided himself with a passport,--that cost five roubles. He had
forty roubles left for his round trip, and he bought bread and herring
for the voyage. The ship was loaded, then the pilgrims were admitted,
and Tarásych sat down beside the pilgrim he had met. The anchors were
weighed, they pushed off from the shore, and the ship sailed across the
sea.
During the day they had good sailing; in the evening a wind arose, rain
fell, and the ship began to rock and to be washed by the waves. The
people grew excited; the women began to shriek, and such men as were
weak ran up and down the ship, trying to find a safe place. Efím, too,
was frightened, but he did not show it: where he had sat down on the
floor on boarding the ship by the side of Tambóv peasants, he sat
through the night and the following day; all of them held on to their
wallets and did not speak. On the third day it grew calmer. On the fifth
day they landed at Constantinople.
Some of the pilgrims went ashore there, to visit the Cathedral of St.
Sophia, which now the Turks hold; Tarásych did not go, but remained on
board the ship. All he did was to buy some white bread. They remained
there a day, and then again sailed through the sea. They stopped at
Smyrna town, and at another city by the name of Alexandria, and safely
reached the city of Jaffa. In Jaffa all pilgrims go ashore: from there
it is seventy versts on foot to Jerusalem. At the landing the people had
quite a scare: the ship was high, and the people were let down into
boats below; but the boats were rocking all the time, and two people
were let down past the boat and got a ducking, but otherwise all went
safely.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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