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"Why, what good Christian ever goes there! Well I never!" "Oh, you fool!" sighed Chelkash, and again he turned away from his companion, conscious this time of a positive disinclination to waste another word on him. This stalwart village lad roused some feeling in him.
But he had hardly taken two steps when Gavrilo, crouched like a cat on one knee, and with a wide sweep of his arm, flung a round stone at him, viciously, shouting: "O one!" Chelkash uttered a cry, clapped his hands to the nape of his neck, staggered forward, turned round to Gavrilo, and fell on his face on the sand. Gavrilo's heart failed him as he watched him.
And the latter gazed at him intently, vigilantly and thoughtfully. He saw before him a man whose life had fallen into his wolfish clutches. He, Chelkash, felt that he had the power to do with it as he pleased. He could rend it like a card, and he could help to set it on a firm footing in its peasant framework.
Gavrilo sat mute; he rowed, and breathing hard, looked askance where that fiery sword still rose and sank. He was utterly unable to believe Chelkash that it was only a lantern and a reflector.
"I say that's a sum! If I, poor wretch, had that! Ah, I'd have a fine time with it." "On your land?" "To be sure! Why, I'd be off " And Gravilo floated off into day dreams. Chelkash seemed crushed. His mustaches drooped, his right side was soaked by the splashing of the waves, his eyes looked sunken and had lost their brightness. He was a pitiable and depressed figure.
Then across the wall stretched Chelkash's long figure, the oars appeared from somewhere, Gavrilo's bag dropped at his feet, and Chelkash, breathing heavily, settled himself in the stern. Gavrilo gazed at him with a glad and timid smile. "Tired?" "Bound to be that, calf! Come now, row your best! Put your back into it! You've earned good wages, mate. Half the job's done.
If you weren't wanted, I shouldn't have taken you. Do you understand? So, shut up!" "Lord!" Gavrilo sighed, sobbing. "Come, come! you'd better mind!" Chelkash cut him short. But Gavrilo by now could not restrain himself, and quietly sobbing, he wept, sniffed, and writhed in his seat, yet rowed vigorously, desperately. The boat shot on like an arrow.
"Well, then, you'd have a horse. A first-rate horse! A cow sheep fowls of all sorts. Eh?" "Don't talk of it! If I only could! Oh, Lord! What a life I should have!" "Aye, mate, your life would be first-rate. I know something about such things. I had a home of my own once. My father was one of the richest in the village." Chelkash rowed slowly.
The boat danced on the waves that sportively splashed over its edge; it scarcely moved forward on the dark sea; which frolicked more and more gayly. The two men were dreaming, rocked on the water, and pensively looking around them. Chelkash had turned Gavrilo's thoughts to his village with the aim of encouraging and reassuring him.
As the youth listened to Chelkash, at first his mouth dropped open, his round face expressing bewildered rapture; then, grasping the fact that this tattered fellow was romancing, he closed his lips with a smack and guffawed. Chelkash kept a serious face, hiding a smile in his mustache. "You funny chap, you chaff away as though it were the truth, and I listen as if it were a bit of news!
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