The peasant went up to the water’s edge, took the rope in his hands, and shouted; “Ieronim!  Ieron—­im!”

As though in answer to his shout, the slow peal of a great bell floated across from the further bank.  The note was deep and low, as from the thickest string of a double bass; it seemed as though the darkness itself had hoarsely uttered it.  At once there was the sound of a cannon shot.  It rolled away in the darkness and ended somewhere in the far distance behind me.  The peasant took off his hat and crossed himself.

’"Christ is risen,” he said.

Before the vibrations of the first peal of the bell had time to die away in the air a second sounded, after it at once a third, and the darkness was filled with an unbroken quivering clamour.  Near the red lights fresh lights flashed, and all began moving together and twinkling restlessly.

“Ieron—­im!” we heard a hollow prolonged shout.

“They are shouting from the other bank,” said the peasant, “so there is no ferry there either.  Our Ieronim has gone to sleep.”

The lights and the velvety chimes of the bell drew one towards them. . . .  I was already beginning to lose patience and grow anxious, but behold at last, staring into the dark distance, I saw the outline of something very much like a gibbet.  It was the long-expected ferry.  It moved towards us with such deliberation that if it had not been that its lines grew gradually more definite, one might have supposed that it was standing still or moving to the other bank.

“Make haste!  Ieronim!” shouted my peasant.  “The gentleman’s tired of waiting!”

The ferry crawled to the bank, gave a lurch and stopped with a creak.  A tall man in a monk’s cassock and a conical cap stood on it, holding the rope.

“Why have you been so long?” I asked jumping upon the ferry.

“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake,” Ieronim answered gently.  “Is there no one else?”

“No one. . . .”

Ieronim took hold of the rope in both hands, bent himself to the figure of a mark of interrogation, and gasped.  The ferry-boat creaked and gave a lurch.  The outline of the peasant in the high hat began slowly retreating from me—­so the ferry was moving off.  Ieronim soon drew himself up and began working with one hand only.  We were silent, gazing towards the bank to which we were floating.  There the illumination for which the peasant was waiting had begun.  At the water’s edge barrels of tar were flaring like huge camp fires.  Their reflections, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in long broad streaks.  The burning barrels lighted up their own smoke and the long shadows of men flitting about the fire; but further to one side and behind them from where the velvety chime floated there was still the same unbroken black gloom.  All at once, cleaving the darkness, a rocket zigzagged in a golden ribbon up the sky; it described an arc and, as though broken to pieces against the sky, was scattered crackling into sparks.  There was a roar from the bank like a far-away hurrah.