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For two hours the surveyor shouted, and it was only after he was quite husky and had resigned himself to spending the night in the forest that a faint breeze wafted the sound of a moan to him. "Klim, is it you, dear fellow? Let us go on." "You'll mu-ur-der me!" "But I was joking, my dear man! I swear to God I was joking! As though I had revolvers! I told a lie because I was frightened.
For goodness sake let us go on, I am freezing!" Klim, probably reflecting that a real robber would have vanished long ago with the horse and cart, came out of the forest and went hesitatingly up to his passenger. "Well, what were you frightened of, stupid? I . . . I was joking and you were frightened. Get in!"
Well, if you like I will take them out and show you. . . ." The surveyor made a pretence of feeling in his pockets and at that moment something happened which he could not have expected with all his cowardice. Klim suddenly rolled off the cart and ran as fast as he could go into the forest. "Help!" he roared. "Help! Take the horse and the cart, you devil, only don't take my life. Help!"
Why is it he has taken to looking round at me so often? He is plotting something for certain. . . . At first he drove like a snail and now how he is dashing along!" "I say, Klim, why are you making the horse go like that?" "I am not making her go. She is racing along of herself. . . . Once she gets into a run there is no means of stopping her. It's no pleasure to her that her legs are like that."
And where I got the strength I can't say. . . . One grips a strapping fellow of your sort with one hand and . . . wipes him out." Klim looked round at the surveyor, wrinkled up his whole face, and lashed his horse. "Yes . . ." the surveyor went on. "God forbid anyone should tackle me.
Concerning the actions attributed to him, it is necessary to say that the greater part consist of myths, which are told of particular individuals of every country, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic: for example, the story of cutting off the bull's tail is not only told of him but of the Irish thief Delany, and is to be found in the "Lives of Irish Rogues and Rapparees;" certain tricks related of him in the printed tale bearing his name are almost identical with various rogueries related in the story- book of Klim the Russian robber, and the most poetical part of Tom Shone's history, namely, that in which he threatens to cut off the hand of the reluctant bride unless she performs her promise, is, in all probability, an offshoot of the grand myth of "the severed hand," which in various ways figures in the stories of most nations, and which is turned to considerable account in the tale of the above-mentioned Russian worthy Klim.
"I said to the men that I wanted to honour Henry all I could, but with my bulk, I'd hev all I could do, come Jedgment Day, to bust my box, an' heave up the clods, without havin' to hist up a piece of iron an' klim from under it." Mother stiffened and Leon slipped again. He could have more accidents than any boy I ever knew.
The road and Klim no longer seemed dangerous to him. ONE fine morning the collegiate assessor, Kirill Ivanovitch Babilonov, who had died of the two afflictions so widely spread in our country, a bad wife and alcoholism, was being buried.
"God be with you, sir," Klim muttered as he clambered into the cart, "if I had known I wouldn't have taken you for a hundred roubles. I almost died of fright. . . ." Klim lashed at the little mare. The cart swayed. Klim lashed once more and the cart gave a lurch. After the fourth stroke of the whip when the cart moved forward, the surveyor hid his ears in his collar and sank into thought.
I can't go on alone because I don't know the way; besides they may think I have stolen his horse. . . . What's to be done?" "Klim! Klim," he cried. "Klim," answered the echo.
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