He was lying on his back, bent a little to one side, with his left arm
thrown above his head ... the right was turned under his bent body. The
sticky slime had sucked in the tips of his feet, shod in tall sailor's
boots; the short blue pea-jacket, all impregnated with sea-salt, had not
unbuttoned; a red scarf encircled his neck in a hard knot. The swarthy
face, turned skyward, seemed to be laughing; from beneath the upturned
upper lip small close-set teeth were visible; the dim pupils of the
half-closed eyes were hardly to be distinguished from the darkened
whites; covered with bubbles of foam the dirt-encrusted hair spread out
over the ground and laid bare the smooth forehead with the purplish line
of the scar; the narrow nose rose up like a sharp, white streak between
the sunken cheeks. The storm of the past night had done its work.... He
had not beheld America! The man who had insulted my mother, who had
marred her life, my father--yes! my father, I could cherish no doubt as
to that--lay stretched out helpless in the mud at my feet. I experienced
a sense of satisfied vengeance, and compassion, and repulsion, and
terror most of all ... of twofold terror; terror of what I had seen, and
of what had come to pass. That evil, that criminal element of which I
have already spoken, those incomprehensible spasms rose up within
me ... stifled me.
"Aha!" I thought to myself: "so that is why I am what I am.... That is
where blood tells!" I stood beside the corpse and gazed and waited, to
see whether those dead pupils would not stir, whether those benumbed
lips would not quiver. No! everything was motionless; the very seaweed,
among which the surf had cast him, seemed to have congealed; even the
gulls had flown away--there was not a fragment anywhere, not a plank or
any broken rigging. There was emptiness everywhere ... only he--and
I--and the foaming sea in the distance. I cast a glance behind me; the
same emptiness was there; a chain of hillocks on the horizon ... that
was all!
I dreaded to leave that unfortunate man in that loneliness, in the ooze
of the shore, to be devoured by fishes and birds; an inward voice told
me that I ought to hunt up some men and call them thither, if not to
aid--that was out of the question--at least for the purpose of laying
him out, of bearing him beneath an inhabited roof.... But indescribable
terror suddenly took possession of me. It seemed to me as though that
dead man knew that I had come thither, that he himself had arranged that
last meeting--it even seemed as though I could hear that dull, familiar
muttering.... I ran off to one side ... looked behind me once more....
Something shining caught my eye; it brought me to a standstill. It was
a golden hoop on the outstretched hand of the corpse.... I recognised my
mother's wedding-ring. I remember how I forced myself to return, to go
close, to bend down.... I remember the sticky touch of the cold fingers,
I remember how I panted and puckered up my eyes and gnashed my teeth, as
I tugged persistently at the ring....
At last I got it off--and I fled--fled away, in headlong flight,--and
something darted after me, and overtook me and caught me.