Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/514

innumerable fiery eyes of the ship were barely visible, because of the snow, to the Devil watching from the crags of Gibraltar, from the stony gateway of two worlds, the ship receding into the night and the snow gale. The Devil was as enormous as a cliff, but even more enormous was the ship, many-tiered, many-tunnelled, created by the pride of the New Man with an ancient heart. The snow gale smote upon its rigging and wide-throated funnels, white from the snow, but the ship was steadfast, firm, majestic—and terrifying. Upon its topmost deck were reared, in their solitude among the snowy whirlwinds, those snug, dimly lighted chambers where, plunged in a light and uneasy slumber, was its ponderous guide who resembled a pagan idol, reigning over the whole ship. He heard the pained howlings and the ferocious squealings of the storm-stifled siren, but comforted himself by the proximity of that which, in the final summing up, was incomprehensible even to himself, that which was on the other side of his wall: that large cabin, which had the appearance of being armoured, and was being constantly filled by the mysterious rumbling, quivering, and crisp sputtering of blue flames, flaring up and exploding around the pale-faced operator, with a metal half-hoop upon his head. In the very depths, in the submerged womb of the Atlantis, were the thirty-thousand-pound masses of boilers and of all sorts of other machinery— dully glittering with steel, hissing out steam and exuding oil and boiling water,— of that kitchen, made red hot from infernal furnaces underneath, wherein was brewing the motion of the ship. Forces, fearful in their concen-