The air was cool. My clothes were wet with the mist and rain, besides being too thin for spending the night in the wood, so that I soon began to suffer from the cold. I tried to light a fire, but the matches were damp, and the only one which burnt could not set fire to the moist brushwood and logs. Having, therefore, gathered some grass, I hid my feet in it, as they were suffering the most from the cold; I examined my gun, and loaded it, and then, crouching against a tree, I tried to go to sleep. In a situation of this kind every sense is rapidly dulled,--touch, smell, even sight; hearing alone becomes exceedingly acute. After only a few minutes I could hear my heart beating, the blood pouring through my veins, the whisper of the trees, the rustle of the mist, so that the dead silence of the wood was broken in upon by sounds, which, though scarcely audible, continued to increase. Suddenly a very real sound rang out amid these fancied ones, and forced me to open my eyes. It came from the further end of the lake, and was like the measured strokes of an oar. I fixed my eyes on the spot whence it seemed to come. The veil of mist was trembling slightly, and beyond it, in the distance, something indistinct appeared low on the water. After a moment a small Yakut pirogue emerged from the shadows, and sped along the lake. I could perfectly well see the rower squatting in the bottom of the boat, and striking first with one, then with the other blade of his long oar, from the ends of which the water poured in a shining stream, like molten silver. He soon approached the bank, and drew the boat to land. I crept towards him, hiding in order that he should not see me too soon, and run away, as I knew he would. He was engaged in taking something out of the boat. 'What news?' I greeted him, according to the local custom, coming slowly out of the bushes. He started and exclaimed, but did not run away, for he recognized me, and I him. He was a poor Yakut, who lived about five versts from me. 'I know nothing! I have heard nothing! Oh, how you did frighten me,--but it's all right!' he said hastily, giving me his hand. 'What did you think it was?' 'Why should one meet a man in the wood at night time?' he answered evasively, eyeing me suspiciously from head to foot. 'You often think it's a man you know, and you talk to him as if you knew him, and then it turns out in the end not to be a man at all.' 'What are you doing here so late?' 'I am going home; it's a holiday to-morrow. I have a long way to go from here to Babylon[19] for fishing,--thirty versts. You know we're poor folk, we live by fishing,--we haven't any horses; so one is always in a boat, always in a boat. As I was dragging it through the wood I cut my foot, so I've got behindhand.' 'You have cut your foot?' 'It isn't much, for I've stopped the bleeding.' 'Then perhaps it was you whistling and calling?' I asked, remembering a strange sound I had heard a moment before.