"That's the way! Of course! You have learning, but I have strength. What do they say about it? Camels!"
He listened with great attention, but often grumbled:
"Rubbish! You could n't cut a man in half from his shoulders to his haunches; it can't be done. And you can't thrust a pike upward; it would break it. I have been a soldier myself."
Andrei's treachery aroused his disgust.
'There's a mean creature, eh? Like women! Tfoo!
But when Tarass killed his son, the cook let his feet slip from the hammock, bent himself double, and wept. The tears trickled down his cheeks, splashed upon the deck as he breathed stertorously and muttered:
"Oh, my God! my God!"
And suddenly he shouted to me:
"Go on reading, you bone of the devil!"
Again he wept, with even more violence and bitterness, when I read how Ostap cried, out before his death, "Father, dost thou hear?"