Twelve chairs were loaded into the cart one after another.
They were very like Vorobyaninov's chairs, except that the covering was not flowered chintz, but rep with blue and pink stripes.
Father Theodore was overcome with impatience.
Under his shirt behind a twisted cord he had tucked a hatchet.
He sat next to the driver and, constantly looking round at the chairs, drove to Batumi.
The spirited horses carried the holy father and his treasure down along the highway past the Finale restaurant, where the wind swept across the bamboo tables and arbours, past a tunnel that was swallowing up the last few tank cars of an oil train, past the photographer, deprived that overcast day of his usual clientele, past a sign reading
"Batumi Botanical Garden", and carried him, not too quickly, along the very line of surf.
At the point where the road touched the rocks, Father Theodore was soaked with salty spray.
Rebuffed by the rocks, the waves turned into waterspouts and, rising up to the sky, slowly fell back again.
The jolting and the spray from the surf whipped Father Theodore's troubled spirit into a frenzy.
Struggling against the wind, the horses slowly approached Makhinjauri.
From every side the turbid green waters hissed and swelled.
Right up to Batumi the white surf swished like the edge of a petticoat peeking from under the skirt of a slovenly woman.
"Stop!" Father Theodore suddenly ordered the driver. "Stop, Mohammedan!"
Trembling and stumbling, he started to unload the chairs on to the deserted shore.
The apathetic Adzhar received his five roubles, whipped up the horses and rode off.
Making sure there was no one about, Father Theodore carried the chairs down from the rocks on to a dry patch of sand and took out his hatchet.
For a moment he hesitated, not knowing where to start.
Then, like a man walking in his sleep, he went over to the third chair and struck the back a ferocious blow with the hatchet.
The chair toppled over undamaged.
"Aha!" shouted Father Theodore. "I'll show you!"
And he flung himself on the chair as though it had been a live animal.
In a trice the chair had been hacked to ribbons.
Father Theodore could not hear the sound of the hatchet against the wood, cloth covering, and springs.
All sounds were drowned by the powerful roar of the gale.
"Aha!
Aha!
Aha!" cried the priest, swinging from the shoulder.
One by one the chairs were put out of action.
Father Theodore's fury increased more and more.
So did the fury of the gale.
Some of the waves came up to his feet.
From Batumi to Sinop there was a great din.
The sea raged and vented its spite on every little ship.
The S.S. Lenin sailed towards Novorossisk with its two funnels smoking and its stern plunging low in the water.
The gale roared across the Black Sea, hurling thousand-ton breakers on to the shore of Trebizond, Yalta, Odessa and Konstantsa.
Beyond the still in the Bosporus and the Dardanelles surged the Mediterranean.
Beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, the Atlantic smashed against the shores of Europe.
A belt of angry water encircled the world.
And on the Batumi shore stood Father Theodore, bathed in sweat and hacking at the final chair.
A moment later it was all over.
Desperation seized him.
With a dazed look at the mountain of legs, backs, and springs, he turned back.
The water grabbed him by the feet.
He lurched forward and ran soaked to the road.
A huge wave broke on the spot where he had been a moment before and, swirling back, washed away the mutilated furniture.
Father Theodore no longer saw anything.
He staggered along the road, hunched and hugging his fist to his chest.
He went into Batumi, unable to see anything about him.
His position was the most terrible thing of all.