Once the boatswain, a handsome, but ill-natured, man, said to him:
"They are the same as Little Russians; they hold the same faith."
The cook seized him by the collar and belt, lifted him up in the air, and said, shaking him:
"Shall I knock you to smithereens?"
They quarreled often, these two. Sometimes it even came to a fight, but Smouri was never beaten. He was possessed of superhuman strength, and besides this, the captain's wife, with a masculine face and smooth hair like a boy's, was on his side.
He drank a terrible amount of vodka, but never became drunk. He began to drink the first thing in the morning, consuming a whole bottle in four gulps, and after that he sipped beer till close on evening. His face gradually grew brown, his eyes widened.
Sometimes in the evening he sat for hours in the hatchway, looking large and white, without breaking his silence, and his eyes were fixed gloomily on the distant horizon. At those times they were all more afraid of him than ever, but I was sorry for him. Jaakov Ivanich would come out from the kitchen, perspiring and glowing with the heat. Scratching his bald skull and waving his arm, he would take cover or say from a distance:
"The fish has gone off."
"Well, there is the salted cabbage."
"But if they ask for fish-soup or boiled fish?"