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Updated: May 1, 2025
Chelkash chuckled. "Well, you do look " Gavrilo brought out with a broad grin at last. "You're quite a gentleman!" "We soon change. But, I say, you're easily scared! aye! How many times were you ready to die last night? eh? tell me!" "Well, but just think, it's the first time I've ever been on such a job! Why one may lose one's soul for all one's life!" "Well, would you go again? Eh?" "Again?
The youth was broad-shouldered, squarely built, flaxen headed, with a sunburnt and weather-beaten face, and big blue eyes that stared with confident simplicity at Chelkash. Chelkash grinned at him, put out his tongue, and making a fearful face, stared persistently at him with wide-open eyes.
Chelkash's boat stopped and rocked on the water, as though in uncertainty. Gavrilo lay at the bottom, his face hidden in his hands, until Chelkash poked him with an oar and whispered furiously, but softly: "Fool, it's the customs cruiser. That's the electric light! Get up, blockhead! Why, they'll turn the light on us in a minute! You'll be the ruin of yourself and me! Come!"
His face wore an expression of childish bewilderment and foolish enthusiasm. Trying to say something, he smacked his lips absurdly and bellowed. Chelkash, watching him intently, twisted his mustaches, and as though recollecting something, still smiled to himself, but morosely now and maliciously. The eating-house roared with drunken clamor.
Ah, how true it is! Look at you, now, what you've become away from the land! Aha! The land, brother, is like a mother, you can't forget it for long." Chelkash awaked from his reverie. He felt that scalding irritation in his chest, which always came as soon as his pride, the pride of the reckless vagrant, was touched by anyone, and especially by one who was of no value in his eyes.
The darkness seemed more alive. "Come, tell me," began Chelkash, "you'll go home to the village, and you'll marry and begin digging the earth and sowing corn, your wife will bear you children, food won't be too plentiful, and so you'll grind away all your life. Well? Is there such sweetness in that?" "Sweetness!" Gavrilo answered, timid and trembling, "what, indeed?"
He jumped up from his post, tugged at his moustache with his left hand, while his sinewy right hand was clenched into a fist, hard as iron, and his eyes gleamed. The youth was frightened. He looked quickly round him, and blinking uneasily, he, too, jumped up from the ground. Measuring one another with their eyes, they paused. "Well?" Chelkash queried, sullenly.
But he restrained himself, puffed like a steamer, and was silent, glancing from under his brows at Chelkash.
Chelkash staggered; he sat heavily down on the sand, and grinding his teeth, brandished his long arm and clenched fist in the air. But before he had time to strike he was pulled up by Gavrilo's shame-faced and supplicating whisper: "Friend! Give me that money! Give it me, for Christ's sake! What is it to you?
Oh, I know that may happen to anyone. Good Lord, as though I've never seen drunkards! Lots of them! and worse than you too." "All right, all right! Then you agree?" Chelkash said more amicably. "I? Ye-es! With pleasure! Name your terms." "That's according to the job. As the job turns out. According to the job. Five roubles you may get. Do you see?"
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