“Where is my place, then?” he thought gloomily. “Where is my work? Am I, then, some deformed being? I have just as much strength as any of them. But of what use is it to me?” The chains clanged, the pulleys groaned, the blows of the axes resounded loud over the river, and the barges rocked from the shocks of the waves, but to Foma it seemed that he was rocking not because the barge was rocking under his feet, but rather because he was not able to stand firmly anywhere, he was not destined to do so.
The contractor, a small-sized peasant with a small pointed gray beard, and with narrow little eyes on his gray wrinkled face, came up to him and said, not loud, but pronouncing his words with a certain tone from the bottom of the river. He wished that they might not succeed, that they might feel embarrassed in his presence, and a wicked thought flashed through his mind:
“Perhaps the chains will break.”
“Boys! Attention!” shouted the contractor. “Start all together. God bless us!” And suddenly, clasping his hands in the air, he cried in a shrill voice:
“Let—her—go-o-o!”
The labourers took up his shout, and all cried out in one voice, with excitement and exertion:
“Let her go! She moves.”
The pulleys squeaked and creaked, the chains clanked, strained under the heavy weight that suddenly fell upon them; and the labourers, bracing their chests against the handle of the windlasses, roared and tramped heavily. The waves splashed noisily between the barges as though unwilling to give up their prize to the men. Everywhere about Foma, chains and ropes were stretched and they quivered from the strain—they were creeping somewhere across the deck, past his feet, like huge gray worms; they were lifted upward, link after link, falling back with a rattling noise, and all these sounds were drowned by the deafening roaring of the labourers.
“It goes, it goes, it goes,” they all sang in unison, triumphantly. But the ringing voice of the contractor pierced the deep wave of their voices, and cut it even as a knife cuts bread.
“My boys! Go ahead, all at once, all at once.”