330 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
and then naving called down a blessing from the saint whom their brown illuminated sail glorified, their net had filled to overflowing. They emptied it with much rejoicing upon their reeking deck, and then spread their canvas to catch the morning breeze for Venice.
It wanted yet an hour or so to dawn, the first opaline advances of which began to move the curtains of the East- ern sky. Only a handful of pale stars remained in the heavens. The sea had been rough on the previous night, and a strong under swell was left in memory of the passing storm. The picturesque smack rose and fell with a regu- lar cadenza of motion.
While one of the men steered and attended to the navi- gation, the other two were busy getting their fish into the hold, singing all the while a kind of answering chorus to the chant of the steersman.
Presently the soloist paused in his song to gaze intently to windward where he fancied he saw something in the water. It was not a boat, nor was it a fish. It might be a piece of floating wreckage. But it looked strangely like some awful vision of the deep. The helmsman said nothing, but crossed himself devoutly and looked in another direc- tion.
The opaline glow that had at first been very faint now gave place to streaks of pink and grey and red ; it looked like a stormy breaking of the morning.
There was an unusual shadow, too, upon the sea, the steersman thought. He feared to look to windward, though he tried to smother a superstitious dread that came over him in a repetition of his fisherman's chant, and again his mates took up the refrain. He no longer saw the strange weird something in the sea ; it was still there, nevertheless, rising and falling with the swelling waves. Once in a way the first beams of the morning fell upon it as if with inqui- sitive glances. Then the shadowy forms of the Euganean
