"Fine Modeira!" replied Velenchúk louder than the others, and with a burst of laughter. "Let's have some of it."
"Well, then, what did you have to tell them about the Esiatics?" said Maksímof, carrying his inquiries still further, as the general merriment subsided.
Chikin bent down to the fire, picked up a coal with his stick, put it on his pipe, and, as though not noticing the discreet curiosity aroused in his hearers, puffed for a long time in silence.
When at last he had raised a sufficient cloud of smoke, he threw away the coal, pushed his cap still farther on the back of his head, and making a grimace, and with an almost imperceptible smile, he continued: "They asked," said he, "'What kind of a person is the little Cherkés yonder? or is it the Turk that you are fighting with in the Kapkas country?' I tell 'em, 'The Cherkés here with us is not of one sort, but of different sorts. Some are like the mountaineers who live on the rocky mountain-tops, and eat stones instead of bread. The biggest of them,' I say, 'are exactly like big logs, with one eye in the middle of the forehead, and they wear red caps;' they glow like fire, just as you do, my dear fellow," he added, addressing a young recruit, who, in fact, wore an odd little cap with a red crown.
The recruit, at this unexpected sally, suddenly sat down on the ground, slapped his knees, and burst out laughing and coughing so that he could hardly command his voice to say, "That's the kind of mountaineers we have here."
"'And,' says I, 'besides, there are the mumri,'" continued Chikin, jerking his head so that his hat fell forward on his forehead; "'they go out in pairs, like little twins,—these others. Every thing comes double with them,' says I,' and they cling hold of each other's hands, and run so queek that I tell you you couldn't catch up with them on horseback.'—'Well,' says he, 'these mumri who are so small as you say, I suppose they are born hand in hand?'" said Chikin, endeavoring to imitate the deep throaty voice of the peasant. "'Yes,' says I, 'my dear man, they are so by nature. You try to pull their hands apart, and it makes 'em bleed, just as with the Chinese: when you pull their caps off, the blood comes.'—'But tell us,' says he, 'how they kill any one.'—'Well, this is the way,' says I: 'they take you, and they rip you all up, and they reel out your bowels in their hands. They reel 'em out, and you defy them and defy them—till your soul'" ...
"Well, now, did they believe any thing you said, Chikin?" asked Maksímof with a slight smile, when those standing round had stopped laughing.
"And indeed it is a strange people, Feódor Maksímuitch: they believe every one; before God, they do. But still, when I began to tell them about Mount Kazbek, and how the snow does not melt all summer there, they all burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. 'What a story!' they said. 'Could such a thing be possible,—a mountain so big that the snow does not melt on it?' And I say, 'With us, when the thaw comes, there is such a heap; and even after it begins to melt, the snow lies in the hollows.'—'Go away,'" said Chikin, with a concluding wink.
[9] sikhárki.
[10] Kaphas for Kavkas, Caucasus.