But Jakoff jumped on one side and ran towards the sea.
Vassili rushed after him with head down, and arms stretched out, but he stumbled over some obstacle, and fell, with his chest on the ground. He rose rapidly to his knees, and then sat down, resting his hands on the sand. He was completely exhausted by the struggle, and he howled piteously with unappeased rage, and with the bitter consciousness of his feebleness.
"Curse you!" he cried, stretching his neck out in Jakoff's direction, and shaking the froth from his trembling lips.
Jakoff was leaning against a boat, and watching him narrowly. With one hand he was rubbing his injured head. One of his shirt-sleeves hung by a thread, his collar also was in rags, and his white moist chest shone in the sun as if he had been rubbed with oil. He was feeling contempt for his father; he had thought him so strong, and now he saw him overcome and in a deplorable state, seated on the sand, shaking his fists, and Jakoff smiled condescendingly with the wounding smile of the strong over the weak.
"May the lightning strike you!... Curse you again and again!" Vassili shouted his curses so loud that Jakoff turned involuntarily towards the fisheries, as if he thought that the desperate shouting could be heard there. But over there was nothing but waves and sunlight He spat, and remarked—
"Call, call louder! Who are you going to frighten?... And if there has been something between us I'll tell you at once and make an end of it...."
"Hold your tongue! Don't let me see you any more! Go away!" cried Vassili.
"I shall not go to the village.... I shall spend the winter here," said Jakoff, without paying any attention to his father's shouts, though he watched his every movement "One is better here.... I quite understand that.... I am not a fool. Work is less hard here, and there is more liberty.... There you would be always ordering me about but here, just try it on!"
He put his thumb to his nose, and laughed a quiet laugh, but in such a way that Vassili once more seized with fury bounded to his feet, and seizing hold of an oar shouted—
"That's the way you treat your father?... Ah! I will kill you!" But when, mad with rage, he reached the boat, Jakoff was already far away. He ran on, and the tom sleeve of his shirt floated in the breeze behind him.