The sailor

Here they tell a story of a sailor keeping watch in a fog in which the moon shined through the tendrils of air somewhere up the Ural. The sailor, leaning on a gunwhale, alone and feeling sorry for himself, was a Cossack who sang aloud about wandering as an orphan. With no home to return to, since the captain was an evil man, in the dark of night, the sailor jumped ship and slipped ashore. A girl under a willow tree, who was also an orphan, took pity and sang for him, so they ended up together. They tell this story about the sailor, as though they were all sailors, all orphans lost in a fog, free to come, and free to go.