Chap­ter X begins by immers­ing read­ers in the final hours of Gusev’s jour­ney, where the ocean air hangs heavy and the motion of the ship is steady but unre­lent­ing. His weak­ened body remains con­fined below deck, bare­ly touched by the out­side world, his mind flick­er­ing between lucid­i­ty and hal­lu­ci­na­tion. Fever blurs his per­cep­tion, yet in his thoughts, he returns home, see­ing glimpses of famil­iar faces and the com­forts of his for­mer life. These men­tal images, how­ev­er, are soon inter­rupt­ed by aching bones and a tight­en­ing chest. Around him, the ship con­tin­ues its route as if unaware of his suf­fer­ing, the crew dis­tant and rou­tine-dri­ven. The indif­fer­ence of the ocean becomes a mir­ror to Gusev’s fad­ing con­scious­ness, empha­siz­ing how qui­et­ly a per­son can slip from life into death. His body, frag­ile and bare­ly respon­sive, begins to sur­ren­der, inch­ing toward a release that now feels inevitable.

With­in Gusev’s mind, mem­o­ries blend with dream­like sen­sa­tions that cap­ture a long­ing for warmth and escape. The image of a steam bath turns sur­re­al, wrap­ping him in imag­ined heat while real chills run through him. He dreams of float­ing in a cloud of soft mist, not real­iz­ing that his body is fad­ing even as his spir­it tries to linger in com­fort­ing illu­sions. These final hal­lu­ci­na­tions serve as a gen­tle con­trast to the harsh envi­ron­ment of the ship’s hold—tight, cold, and metal­lic. Gusev’s desire to be home, wrapped in famil­ial love and sun­light, is unmet, yet his mind finds com­fort in sim­u­lat­ed warmth. Mean­while, prepa­ra­tions begin above for his bur­ial, high­light­ing the divide between the inner world of mem­o­ry and the stark real­i­ty out­side. The sailors’ actions are mechan­i­cal, respect­ful but detached, as they stitch his body into sail­cloth and add weights to ensure he sinks into the sea.

The bur­ial at sea is exe­cut­ed with a sense of solemn duty rather than emo­tion­al attach­ment. Offi­cers and sailors line up as the sun ris­es, cast­ing gold across the ocean while Gusev’s body lies still at their feet. The sail­cloth stretch­es taut around his form, giv­ing him the shape of a bulky sack, an image that strips away indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty and under­scores the raw sim­plic­i­ty of death. Yet the col­lec­tive pause, the silence before his body is released, cre­ates a rare moment of uni­ty aboard the ship. The con­trast between the mechan­i­cal pre­ci­sion of the cer­e­mo­ny and the nat­ur­al chaos of the sea speaks to a human need to pre­serve dig­ni­ty, even when life is reduced to rit­u­al. When the body is tipped over­board, it splash­es into the deep, van­ish­ing beneath the waves that roll on, unmoved. The sea swal­lows Gusev, eras­ing his pres­ence while con­tin­u­ing to move, vast and unfeel­ing.

The sto­ry doesn’t end with the peo­ple but fol­lows Gusev’s body beneath the sur­face. Fish dart around the cloth, curi­ous, while rays of sun­light scat­ter through the water like gold­en spears. Nature observes with­out judg­ment, wrap­ping the remains in an oth­er­world­ly beau­ty that con­trasts the ship’s cold prac­ti­cal­i­ty. Coral and col­or swirl in qui­et bal­let, sug­gest­ing that life in its many forms con­tin­ues even in death. The sea, though indif­fer­ent to Gusev’s iden­ti­ty, offers a kind of final rest­ing beau­ty, untouched by human dra­ma. It’s in this marine still­ness that the nar­ra­tive lands its final note—not in the grief of oth­ers, but in the calm accep­tance of the nat­ur­al world. Death, while inevitable and often lone­ly, is also just anoth­er part of the ocean’s end­less rhythm.

By par­al­lel­ing the inner peace Gusev seemed to seek with the ocean’s silent accep­tance, the sto­ry ele­vates his end­ing from tragedy to some­thing more con­tem­pla­tive. In a world where so much is beyond con­trol, where fam­i­lies are left behind and lega­cies for­got­ten, it is in these moments of serene sur­ren­der that mean­ing flick­ers through. Gusev’s final jour­ney reflects not just a phys­i­cal decline but the deeply human wish to mat­ter, to be remem­bered, and to meet death with dig­ni­ty, even if it comes qui­et­ly. Through Chekhov’s lens, even the small­est life can rip­ple against the vast sur­face of the sea, not to dis­turb it, but to become part of its end­less, indif­fer­ent beau­ty.