Emerging from their wretched shanty, they watched the black heralds of the spring carefully building new nests or repairing old ones, and filling the air with their hoarse and anxious cawing.
"Now it will be the turn of the larks," said Hopeful, setting about mending his old and much worn bird-net.
And now the larks also appeared. Then the chums went into the fields, spread their nets on one of the brown thawed patches, and running about in the moist and muddy fields, drove into the nets the hungry birds, who, wearied by their long flight, were seeking their food on the grey earth which had only just freed itself from the snow. On catching the birds they sold them at a pyatachek[1] or a grivenik[2] per head. Then the nettles appeared, which they gathered and carried to the bazaar for the market-garden huckster women. Nearly every day of the spring gave them something fresh to do, some fresh if but trifling bit of work. They could turn everything to some use: osiers, sorrel, mushrooms, strawberries, fungi—nothing passed through their hands in vain. Sometimes the soldiers would come out for firing-practice. After the practice was over the chums would ferret about the earthworks and fish up the bullets, which they would sell subsequently at twenty kopecks the pound. All these occupations certainly prevented the chums from dying of hunger, but very rarely gave them the opportunity of eating their fill, rarely gave them the pleasant feeling of a full stomach working warmly away upon hastily swallowed food.
[1] A silver five kopeck piece.
[2] A ten kopeck piece.
III
Once in April when the country-side had only just began to put forth its buds and shoots, when the woods were still wrapped in a dark blue gloom, and the grass had only just begun to appear on the fat fields basking in the sun—the chums were going along the high-road smoking makharka[1] cigars of their own manufacture, and conversing.
[1] Coarse tobacco smoked by the peasants.
"You are coughing worse than ever," said Jig-Leg to his comrade in a tone of mild reproach.
"A fig for that! Look ye, the dear little sun will soon warm me up—and I shall feel alive again."