“How strange!” said Sergey.
“What is strange?” Werner turned around. “What is strange?”
“I mean—the cigarette.”
Yanson held a cigarette, an ordinary cigarette, in his ordinary live hands, and, pale-faced, looked at it with surprise, even with terror. And all fixed their eyes upon the little tube, from the end of which smoke was issuing, like a bluish ribbon, wafted aside by the breathing, with the ashes, gathering, turning black. The light went out.
“The light’s out,” said Tanya.
“Yes, the light’s out.”
“Let it go,” said Werner, frowning, looking uneasily at Yanson, whose hand, holding the cigarette, was hanging loosely, as if dead. Suddenly Tsiganok turned quickly, bent over to Werner, close to him, face to face, and rolling the whites of his eyes, like a horse, whispered:
“Master, how about the convoys? Suppose we—eh? Shall we try?”
“No, don’t do it,” Werner replied, also in a whisper. “We shall drink it to the bitter end.”
“Why not? It’s livelier in a fight! Eh? I strike him, he strikes me, and you don’t even know how the thing is done. It’s just as if you don’t die at all.”