“I am not a coward anyway!” replied Foma.
“I know that you are not a coward, but why do you boast of it? One may do a thing as well without boasting.”
Yozhov blamed him from a different point of view:
“If you thrust yourself into their hands willingly you can go to the devil! I am not your friend. They’ll catch you and bring you to your father—he wouldn’t do anything to you, while I would get such a spanking that all my bones would be skinned.”
“Coward!” Foma persisted, stubbornly.
And it came to pass one day that Foma was caught by the second captain, Chumakov, a thin little old man. Noiselessly approaching the boy, who was hiding away in his bosom the stolen apples, the old man seized him by the shoulders and cried in a threatening voice:
“Now I have you, little rogue! Aha!”
Foma was then about fifteen years old, and he cleverly slipped out of the old man’s hands. Yet he did not run from him, but, knitting his brow and clenching his fist, he said threateningly:
“You dare to touch me!”
“I wouldn’t touch you. I’ll just turn you over to the police! Whose son are you?”