He was shaking all over from side to side, and showing his teeth like a wild boar. I snatched up my gun and took to my heels. My dog flew after me, barking. He, too, was frightened.
When I got home, I naturally did not, by so much as a word, to my mother, hint at what I had seen; but coming across Souvenir, I told him—the devil knows why—all about it. That loathsome person was so delighted at my story, shrieking with laughter, and even dancing with pleasure, that I could hardly forbear striking him.
‘Ah! I should like,’ he kept repeating breathless with laughter, ‘to see that fiend, the Swede, Harlov, crawling into the mud and sitting in it.…’
‘Go over to the pond if you’re so curious.’
‘Yes; but how if he kills me?’
I felt horribly sick at Souvenir, and regretted my ill-timed confidence.… Zhitkov, to whom he repeated my tale, looked at the matter somewhat differently.
‘We shall have to call in the police,’ he concluded, ‘or, may be, we may have to send for a battalion of military.’
His forebodings with regard to the military battalion did not come true; but something extraordinary really did happen.