140 SHOLOM-ALECHEM
mouth, took the oars in hand again, and said, having crossed himself three times :
"Now for a race !"
A race? With whom? With what? Fishel did not understand, and was afraid to ask; but again he felt the brush of the Death Angel's wing, for Prokop had gone down onto his knees, and was rowing with might and main. Moreover, he said to Fishel, and pointed to the bottom of the boat:
"Kebbe, lie down !"
Fishel understood that he was to lie down, and did not need to be told twice. For now he had seen a whole host of floes coming down upon them, a world of ice, and he shut his eyes, flung himself face down- wards in the boat, and lay trembling like a lamb, and recited in a low voice, "Hear, Israel !" and the Confes- sion, thought on the graves of Israel, and fancied that now, now he lies in the abyss of the waters, now, now comes a fish and swallows him, like Jonah the prophet when he fled to Tarshish, and he remembers Jonah's prayer, and sings softly and with tears :
"Affofuni mayyim ad nofesh the waters have reached unto my soul; tehom yesoveveni the deep hath covered me!"
Fishel the teacher sang and wept and thought piti- fully of his widowed wife and his orphaned children, and Prokop rowed for all he was worth, and sang his little song:
"0 thou maiden with the black lashes !"
And Prokop felt the same on the water as on dry land, and Fishel's "Affofuni" and Prokop's "0 maiden"
