Then he began to feel that he was floating somewhere over an immensely wide and stormy river, and, staggering, he cried out in fright: "Where are we floating?
Where is the captain ?" He was answered by the loud, senseless laughter of the drunken crowd, and by the shrill, repulsive shout of the swarthy little man: "True! we are all without helm and sails.

Where is the captain?
What?
Ha, ha, ha!" Foma awakened from this nightmare in a small room with two windows, and the first thing his eyes fell upon was a withered tree.

It stood near the window; its thick trunk, barkless, with a rotten heart, prevented the light from entering the room; the bent, black branches, devoid of leaves, stretched themselves mournfully and helplessly in the air, and shaking to and fro, they creaked softly, plaintively.

A rain was falling; streams of water were beating against the window-panes, and one could hear how the water was falling to the ground from the roof, sobbing there.

This sobbing sound was joined by another sound--a shrill, often interrupted, hasty scratching of a pen over paper, and then by a certain spasmodic grumbling.
When he turned with difficulty his aching, heavy head on the pillow, Foma noticed a small, swarthy man, who sat by the table hastily scratching with his pen over the paper, shaking his round head approvingly, wagging it from side to side, shrugging his shoulders, and, with all his small body clothed in night garments only, constantly moving about in his chair, as though he were sitting on fire, and could not get up for some reason or other.