Foreign Languages Publishing House

KONSTANTIN STANYUKOVICH

MAXIMKA

SEA STORIES

FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE

Moscow

Translated from the Russian by Bernard Isaacs

Designed by Sergei Pozharsky

Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

On a misty October morning in 1860 the Russian corvette Kalevala set sail from Kronstadt on a foreign cruise. Among the ship's company was seventeen-year-old midshipman Konstantin Stanyukovich, a graduate of the NavalCollege.

A quarter of a century later he published his sea stories, which won him public recognition.

But that autumn morning when lie first left his native shores the young naval officer little suspected what an important part that cruise was to play in his life. Stanyukovich was appointed to the corvette against his own wishes. His ambition was to leave the service and enter the St. PetersburgUniversity, But his father, an old admiral and a man of strong, harsh character, set his face against it and got his son sent on a long foreign cruise. The three-year voyage, however, failed to "knock (lie nonsense" out of Stanyukovich's head, and on returning to St. Petersburg he promptly retired with the fixed intention of taking up a literary career. The summit of that career, namely, his sea stories, was reached by a thorny path. "To make a close study of the life of the people" Stanyukovich worked for several years as a village school-teacher. In 1884 he was banished to Siberia for being connected with Russian revolutionary emigrants. It was there, in exile, that he wrote his sea stories.

The experiences of his youth came to vivid life again, as it were, in his writings.

The reader is given a picture of the hard and hazardous life of sailors at sea, he is shown shipboard life in all its aspects, from the hoisting to the lowering of the flag, he can almost hear the bells striking and see the deck officer pacing the bridge.

But the chief thing is the human element on board—the deep-sea men, wise in the ways of ships and the sea. The sea puts them through a thousand ordeals, taxes their strength, their will and muscles to the utmost. The heroes of Stanyukovich's sea stories, "those who keep the works, going," are seasoned jack tars with weather-beaten faces, who "know their onions" and are capable of feats of valour, men like Luchkin (the story "Maximka"), Chizhik ("The Nurse"), Mityushin ("Daredevil"). Side by side with these are shown brave sympathetic officers, men of honour like Luzgin ("The Nurse"), and Opolyev ("Storm-Tossed"), with the author himself always an invisible presence.

Konstantin Stanyukovich did not become an admiral, but he was, to use his own words, "one of those literary mariners who fear neither gales nor storms and do not abandon their ship in times of distress."

CONTENTS

maximka

the nurse

escape

man overboard

shorty

among friends

storm-tossed

daredevil

MAXIMKA

Dedicated to Tusik

I

HE ship's bell had just struck. It was six o'clock of a magnificent tropical morning in mid Atlantic. The sun, a dazzling, burning ball of gold, was quickly climbing the light blue eastern sky, whose soaring loftiness and soft transparency were flecked here and there, as with scraps of delicate lace, by tiny snow-white wisps of clouds. It suffused the vast expanse of the ocean with radiant lustre. The sea stretched one endless, gently undulating plain from one distant blue horizon to the other. There was a sort of solemn stillness in the air. The only sound was that of the enormous light blue waves racing after each other with silver crests glittering in the sunlight, and merging together with a gentle, almost caressing murmur, as if whispering to you that, out there in the tropics, the ancient primeval ocean is always in the best of moods.

Carefully, like a tender, loving nurse, does she bear the sailing ships upon her gigantic bosom, with never a threat of storm or hurricane to sailor.

The sea was deserted.

There was not a single sail to be seen anywhere, not a single puff of smoke. Nothing but the broad ocean highway.

Now and again the bright silvery scales of a fly-fish would glitter in the sunshine; or a playful whale would show its dark back and noisily send up a fountain of water; or a black frigate-bird or snow-white albatross would soar overhead; or a little grey petrel would speed past over the water, bound for the distant shores of Africa or America. Then again the sea would be deserted. Nothing but the murmuring waves, the sun, and sky—all bright, cheerful and kindly.

Rocking lightly on the ocean's swell, a Russian steam-driven warship, the clipper Zabiyaka, was swiftly heading south, each day carrying her still further from the North, a land grim and sombre, yet so dear and beloved.

A small, black, trim-looking vessel with a flowing grace of line, her three tall raking masts clothed in canvas, the Zabiyaka, listing slightly to leeward, was sailing at seven or eight knots, borne along by a steady, favourable north-east trade wind. She rode the waves lightly and gracefully, cleaving the sea with her prow amid swirls of tumbling foam and flying glittering spray. The waves softly licked her sides, and in her wake lay a broad ribbon of sparkling silver.

Above and below decks the usual 8 a.m. cleaning and scouring were in progress in preparation for hoisting the ship's flag and starting the day on board.

Scattered about the deck in white work shirts with wide blue collars revealing muscular, weather-tanned necks, their feet bare and trousers tucked up above the knees, the sailors were busy washing down, scrubbing and scouring the decks, the sides of the ship, the guns, the brass-work and everything else on the Zabiyaka that required such attention. They worked with the meticulous care sailors always show when they are cleaning their ship, seeing to it that everything, from the trucks down to the holds, shall be spotlessly clean and that everything that can respond to brick, cloth and whiting shall be spick and span.

The sailors were working with a hearty good will, chuckling each time they heard the "bawling" bo'sun, Matveyich—a typical old sea-dog with popping grey eyes and a face red from sunburn and drinking bouts ashore—improvised a particularly talented piece of invective that struck even the accustomed ears of a Russian sailor. Matveyich did this not so much to spur the men on as to stick to form.

No one minded Matveyich's cursing. The men knew him to be a kind and decent man who always dealt fair with them and never abused his position. And they had long grown accustomed to his not being able to speak three words without swearing. Indeed, they were often delighted by the range and variety of his vocabulary in this respect. He was a real artist at it.

Now and again a sailor would run down to the forecastle where the water-tub and the smoke-lamp stood to get a quick smoke of acrid makhorka and exchange a few words with his friends. Then he would return to his task of scrubbing and scouring, making a special effort each time he caught sight of the tall, lean figure of the chief officer, who had been nosing about in every corner of the ship since early morning.

The officer of the watch, a fair-haired young man, whose watch was from four till eight, had long since thrown off the drowsiness of his first half hour. Clad in white, his shirt open at the neck, he paced up and down the bridge, breathing in great gulps of the cool, fresh morning air which the burning sun had not yet heated. A balmy breeze pleasantly caressed the nape of his neck each time he stopped to look at the compass to see whether the helmsman was steering the right course, whether the sails were properly set or whether there were any squall clouds in the sky.

But all was well, and the officer of the watch had practically nothing to do in these blessed tropics.

And he continued his pacing of the bridge, dreaming prematurely of the end of his watch when he would be able to drink a cup of tea with those fresh warm rolls which the officers' cook was such an expert at making, providing that the vodka he got for "raising the dough" was not used by him internally.

II

All of a sudden the morning stillness was broken by the startled, unnaturally loud cry of the look-out man in the bows:

"Man in the sea!"

The sailors dropped their work, rushed to the forecastle and gazed anxiously out into the ocean.

"Where is he?" they shouted to the look-out man, a young fair-haired sailor whose face had gone as white as a sheet.

"Over there!" he said, pointing with a shaking hand. "I can't see him now. But I saw him a minute ago, boys! Hanging on to a mast, he was. Looked as if he was tied to it," he went on excitedly, as he vainly tried to catch sight of the mast again.

The officer of the watch, startled by the look-out man's cry, jammed his binoculars to his eyes and gazed out in the direction in which he had pointed. And the signaller, with his spyglass, did the same.

"Can you see anything?" asked the young officer.

"Yes, sir. Just a bit more to the left, sir."

But just then the officer, too, caught sight of the piece of mast bobbing up and down amid the waves, with a human figure upon it.

And in a shrill, quivering voice he shouted with all the force his healthy lungs could command:

"All hands on deck! In fore and main courses! Man the boat!" And turning to the signal-man, he added excitedly: "Keep your eyes on him!" The boatswain piped the men up and bellowed: "Clear lower deck!"

The men rushed to their stations like mad.

The captain and the chief officer were already on the bridge. The other officers, most of them only half awake, hurried up to the deck, putting on their uniforms as they came.

The chief officer took command—as is the rule when "All hands on deck" is piped—and the sailors jumped to his sharp orders with feverish haste, realizing that every second was precious.

In less than seven minutes practically all the sails were furled and the Zabiyaka hove to, lightly rocking on the waves, and the longboat with eight oarsmen and an officer at the helm had been lowered.

"God speed!" the captain called from the bridge as the boat drew away from the ship.

The sailors rowed for all they were worth, hurrying to the castaway's rescue.

But in the seven minutes it had taken to bring the Zabiyaka to, she had travelled more than a mile, and mast and man could no longer be seen even through the glasses.

They had, however, noticed the direction in which the mast was floating by the compass, and in this direction they now rowed.

The eyes of all the crew of the Zabiyaka followed the boat, which, now rising on the crests of the waves, now sinking into the troughs between them, seemed no bigger than a nutshell.

Before long it was but a black speck.

III

On the deck silence reigned.

Now and again the sailors huddled together in the forecastle and on the quarter-deck would .exchange a few words in low voices:

"Must be some sailor off a wrecked ship."

"No ship can get wrecked in these waters. Not unless she was a pretty rotten one, she wouldn't!"

"No. But maybe she ran foul of another ship at night."

"Or caught fire, maybe."

"And this is the only man left alive!"

"Maybe the others got away in the boats and this fellow got left behind."

"I wonder whether he's alive?"

"Well, the water's warm here—he might be."

"How is it the sharks didn't get him ? These waters are full of 'em."

"Yes, boys—a seaman's life is pretty dangerous, I see," said one of the sailors, suppressing a sigh. He was a young fellow with black hair and an ear-ring in one ear, who had only joined the navy that year and had come to the high seas straight from the plough, so to speak.

And, a sad look on his face, he took off his cap and slowly crossed himself, as if silently praying God to preserve him from a horrible death at sea.

Three-quarters of an hour of agonizing suspense followed.

Then at last the signal-man who had kept his eye glued to the spyglass, called out joyfully:

"The boat's coming back!"

When the boat drew nearer, the chief officer called to him:

"Have they got him?"

"I can't see him, sir," said the signal-man in a voice not quite so cheerful as before.

"I'm afraid they haven't found him," said the chief officer, going up to the captain.

The captain of the Zabiyaka, a short, thickset, sturdy man of middle age with a thick growth of greyish-black hair on his fleshy cheeks and chin, and little round eyes, keen and sharp as a hawk's, shrugged his shoulders impatiently and said with barely concealed irritation:

"I think you're wrong. There is an experienced officer in the boat and he wouldn't have come back so soon if he hadn't found the man."

"But the signal-man can't see him in the boat."

"Maybe he's lying on the bottom. But in any case we'll soon know."

The captain started pacing the bridge, stopping every now and then to glance at the returning boat. Finally he took a look through the binoculars, and although he could not see the rescued man anywhere, the calmly cheerful expression on the coxswain’s face made him feel pretty sure that they had him aboard.

And a pleased smile lit up the captain's stern face.

A few more minutes passed, and then the boat drew alongside and was hoisted on board with its crew.

The officer stepped out, followed by the oarsmen, all red-faced and sweaty and panting with exhaustion. One of the sailors supported the prize of their quest—a little Negro boy, about ten or eleven years old, drenching wet, his little emaciated, glossy body partially covered by a tattered shirt.

The little boy could hardly stand. He was trembling all over and looked up at the sailors with an expression in his big, sunken eyes in which joy seemed mingled with incredulity—as if he could scarcely believe that he had really been rescued.

"The poor kid was half dead when we took him off. We had a job to bring him round," the coxswain told the captain.

"Take him to the sick-bay at once!" ordered the captain.

The boy was promptly carried off to the sick-bay where they rubbed him dry and put him in a bunk and covered him with warm blankets. After that the ship's surgeon started work on him by pouring brandy down his throat, a few drops at a time.

The boy swallowed the brandy thirstily and gazing up at the doctor with imploring eyes, pointed to his mouth.

Meanwhile up on deck the sails had been set again and in no more than five minutes the Zabiyaka was continuing on her way and the sailors were resuming their interrupted tasks.

On all sides animated voices discussed the rescue and commented on the little boy's terribly thin, emaciated appearance.

Some of the men ran down to the sick-bay to ask how he was.

"The doctor's attending to him. He'll bring him round all right!"

An hour later topman Korshunov brought the news that the little Negro boy had fallen asleep after having eaten a few spoonfuls of hot soup.

"The cook made it specially for him, boys. A clear soup—a kind of broth, it was," Korshunov told them excitedly, doubly delighted to have a credulous audience for once (he was a notorious liar) and to have something to tell that he didn't need to lie about.

And as if seeking to make the most of such a unique opportunity, he hurried on:

"The surgeon's assistant told me that the kid was jabbering something when the doctor was feeding him. Asking for more of that soup, he was. And he tried to snatch the cup out of the doctor's hand. But the doctor wouldn't give him any mora 'He's got to go slow,' he said, 'otherwise it would kill him'." "What did the boy do then?" "Nothing; he just had to put up with it." Just then the captain's servant, Soikin, came up to where the sailors were sitting round the water-tub to smoke the stump of the captain's cigar.