21
The Schooner Constantine
Fort Raïm stood on the crest of a hill dominating a green valley. Luxurious meadows down below passed gradually into stands of reed through which the sunlit ripples of the full-fed Syr Darya glittered now and then. In the middle of a square inside the fort stood a tall monument of stone at the grave of Raïm Batyr who died a hundred years earlier and after whom the fort was named.
At the end of a three-day rest, the Orenburg carpenters and Baltic sailors started assembling the schooner with a will on a level bank of the Syr Darya where no shrubs or reeds grew.
Shevchenko sat on the sand under a shed where sail cloth and rings of rope were stacked, and delighted in drawing the light fleecy cloudlets on the horizon.
But his thoughts were far away from the pla
