A DENSE, grayish fog lay over the river, and a steamer, now and then uttering a dull whistle, was slowly forging up against the current.

Damp and cold clouds, of a monotone pallor, enveloped the steamer from all sides and drowned all sounds, dissolving them in their troubled dampness.

The brazen roaring of the signals came out in a muffled, melancholy drone, and was oddly brief as it burst forth from the whistle.

The sound seemed to find no place for itself in the air, which was soaked with heavy dampness, and fell downward, wet and choked.

And the splashing of the steamer's wheels sounded so fantastically dull that it seemed as though it were not begotten near by, at the sides of the vessel, but somewhere in the depth, on the dark bottom of the river.
From the steamer one could see neither the water, nor the shore, nor the sky; a leaden-gray gloominess enwrapped it on all sides; devoid of shadings, painfully monotonous, the gloominess was motionless, it oppressed the steamer with immeasurable weight, slackened its movements and seemed as though preparing itself to swallow it even as it was swallowing the sounds.