“What are you about, Goriantchikoff?” he cried to me; “come here, come here!”
“But what is it all about?”
“They are going to make a formal complaint, don’t you know it? It won’t do them a bit of good; who’ll pay any attention to convicts? They’ll try to find out the ringleaders, and if we are among them they’ll lay it all on us. Just remember what we have been transported for. They’ll only get a whipping, but we shall be put regularly to trial. The Major detests us all, and will be only too happy to ruin us; all his sins will fall on our shoulders.”
“The convicts would tie us hands and feet and sell us directly,” added M—tski, when we got into the kitchen.
“They’ll never have mercy on us,” added T—vski.
Besides the nobles there were in the kitchen about thirty other prisoners who did not want to join in the general complaints, some because they were afraid, others because of their conviction that the whole proceeding would prove quite useless. Akim Akimitch, who was a decided opponent of everything that savoured of complaint, or that could interfere with discipline and the usual routine, waited with great phlegm to see the end of the business, about which he did not care a jot. He was perfectly convinced that the authorities would put it all down immediately.
Isaiah Fomitch’s nose drooped visibly as he listened in a sort of frightened curiosity to what we said about the affair; he was much disturbed. With the Polish nobles were some inferior persons of the same nation, as well as some Russians, timid, dull, silent fellows, who had not dared to join the rest, and who waited in a melancholy way to see what the issue would be. There were also some morose, discontented convicts, who remained in the kitchen, not because they were afraid, but that they thought this half-revolt an absurdity which could not succeed; it seemed to me that these were not a little disturbed, and their faces were quite unsteady. They saw clearly that they were in the right, and that the issue of the movement would be what they had foretold, but they had a sort of feeling that they were traitors who had sold their comrades to the Major. Jolkin—the long-headed Siberian peasant sent to hard labour for coining, the man who got Koulikoff’s town practice from him—was there also, as well as the old man of Starodoub. None of the cooks had left their post, perhaps because they looked upon themselves as belonging specially to the authorities of the place, whom it would be unbecoming, therefore, to join in opposing.
“For all that,” said I to M—tski, “except these fellows, all the convicts are in it,” and no doubt I said it in a way that showed misgivings.
“I wonder what in the world we have to do with it?” growled B——.
“We should have risked a good deal more than they had we gone with them; and why? Je hais ces brigands.[8] Why, do you think that they’ll bring themselves up to the scratch after all? I can’t see what they want putting their heads in the lion’s mouth, the fools.”