“I am quite willing,” replied Koupriane coldly, “but it is the signal for our deaths.”
“Well, why do they wait so to make us die?” muttered Feodor Feodorovitch. “I find them very tedious about it, for myself. What are you doing, Ivan Petrovitch?”
The spectral figure of Ivan Petrovitch, bent beside the door of the stairway, seemed to be hearing things the others could not catch, but which frightened them so that they fled from the general’s chamber in disorder. Ivan Petrovitch was close on them, his eyes almost sticking from his head, his mouth babbling:
“They are there! They are there!”
Athanase Georgevitch open a window wildly and said:
“I am going to jump.”
But Thaddeus Tchitchnikofl’ stopped him with a word. “For me, I shall not leave Feodor Feodorovitch.”
Athanase and Ivan both felt ashamed, and trembling, but brave, they gathered round the general and said, “We will die together, we will die together. We have lived with Feodor Feodorovitch, and we will die with him.”
“What are they waiting for? What are they waiting for?” grumbled the general.
Matrena Petrovna’s teeth chattered. “They are waiting for us to go down,” said Koupraine.