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If your head is reeling go, my dear boy, quietly and peacefully into the cabin and lie down! Lie down, and " "Silence, you!" roared Foma, and turned his eye at him. "Do not dare to speak to me! I am not drunk. I am soberer than any one of you here! Do you understand?" "But wait awhile, my boy. Who invited you here?" asked Kononov, reddening with offence. "I brought him!" rang out Mayakin's voice.
Opposite Kononov, on a trestle, stood a half-vedro barrel of old vodka, imported from Poland; in a huge silver-mounted shell lay oysters, and a certain particoloured cake, in the shape of a tower, stood out above all the viands. "Gentlemen! I entreat you! Help yourselves to whatever you please!" cried Kononov. "I have here everything at once to suit the taste of everyone.
At the sight of his wolf-like, angry face and his wrathful pose, the merchants again became silent for a moment. "What are you gaping at?" asked Foma, and again accompanied his question with a violent oath. "He's drunk!" said Bobrov, with a shake of the head. "And why was he invited?" whispered Reznikov, softly. "Foma Ignatyevich!" said Kononov, sedately, "you mustn't create any scandals.
Among these people there was hardly one about whom Foma did not know something disgraceful. And he knew that they were all surely envying the successful Kononov, who was constantly increasing the number of his steamers from year to year.
All burst into ringing laughter, but soon fell silent, for Yakov Tarasovich Mayakin, rising to his feet, cleared his throat, and, stroking his bald crown, surveyed the merchants with a serious look expecting attention. "Well, brethren, open your ears!" shouted Kononov, with satisfaction. "Gentlemen of the merchant class!" began Mayakin with a smile.
They bustled about, waving their arms, talking to one another some red with anger, others pale, yet all equally powerless to check the flow of his jeers at them. "Send the sailors over here!" cried Reznikov, tugging Kononov by the shoulder. "What's the matter with you, Ilya? Ah? Have you invited us to be ridiculed?" "Against one puppy," screamed Zubov.
When Kononov sank heavily in the chair, as though he were unable to withstand the weight of Foma's harsh words, Foma noticed that bitter and malicious smiles crossed the faces of some of the merchants. He heard some one's whisper of astonishment and approval: "That's well aimed!"
Yozhov glanced at him, spat and burst into harsh laughter. "ARE all here?" asked Ilya Yefimovich Kononov, standing on the bow of his new steamer, and surveying the crowd of guests with beaming eyes. "It seems to be all!" And raising upward his stout, red, happy-looking face, he shouted to the captain, who was already standing on the bridge, beside the speaking-tube: "Cast off, Petrukha!"
Kononov had been tried twenty years ago for arson, and even now he was indicted for the seduction of a minor. Together with him, for the second time already, on a similar charge, Zakhar Kirillov Robustov had been dragged to court. Robustov was a stout, short merchant with a round face and cheerful blue eyes.
And the merchants began to disperse on the steamer, one by one. This irritated Foma still more he wished he could chain them to the spot by his words, but he could not find such powerful words. "You have built up life!" he shouted. "Who are you? Swindlers, robbers." A few men turned toward Foma, as if he had called them. "Kononov! are they soon going to try you for that little girl?
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