Our men soon wearied of pulling against the powerful current, dodging the steamers and the tug-boats with their strings of barks signaled by constellations of colored lanterns high in air. Perhaps they would have borne up better had we been able to obtain some Astrakhan watermelons from the steamer wharves, which we besieged in turn as we passed. They proposed to tow us. On Piotr's assurance that it would be a far swifter mode of locomotion, and that they would pay no more visits to "their gardens," we consented. They set up a mast through an opening in one of the thwarts, passed through a hole in its top a cord the size of a cod-line, fastened this to the stern of the boat, and leaped ashore with the free end. Off they darted, galloping like horses along the old tow-path, and singing vigorously. Piotr remained on board to steer. As we dashed rapidly through the water, we gained practical knowledge of the manner in which every pound of merchandise was hauled to the great Fair from Astrakhan, fourteen hundred and forty miles, before the introduction of steamers, except in the comparatively rare cases where oxen were made to wind windlasses on the deck of a bark. It would have required hours of hard rowing to reach our goal; but by this means we were soon walking across the yielding sands to Piotr's cottage. Our cunning rogues of boatmen took advantage of our scattered march to obtain from us separately such installments of tea-money as must, in the aggregate, have rendered them hilarious for days to come, if they paid themselves for their minstrelsy in the coin which they had suggested to us before breakfast. Piotr's smiling wife, who was small, like most Russian peasant women, had baked us some half-rye, half-wheat bread, to our order; she made it remarkably well, much better than Osip. We secured a more lasting memento of her handiwork in the form of some towel ends, which she had spun, woven, drawn, and worked very prettily. Some long-haired heads were thrust over the oven-top to inspect us, but the bodies did not follow. They were better engaged in enjoying the heat left from the baking. It was two o'clock in the morning when we drove through the village flock of sheep, that lay asleep on the grassy street. With hand on pistol, to guard against a possible stray wolf, we dashed past the shadowy chalk hills; past the nodding sunflowers, whose sleepy eyes were still turned to the east: past the grainfields, transmuted from gold to silver by the moonlight; past the newly plowed land, which looked like velvet billows in its depths of brown, as the moon sank lower and lower beyond in a mantle of flame.