Then he hurried down the bank towards the river, almost tumbling head over heels in his haste. We quickly followed him, and were soon on board; Isaiah and I going in one boat, whilst the judge and Mamaieff went in the other.
"All right, my men!" said the judge, taking off his hat and crossing himself.
The two men in his boat crossed themselves devoutly, and once more started pushing away the ice-blocks which pressed against the sides of the boat.
But the blocks continued to strike the sides of the boat with an angry crashing sound; the air struck cold as it blew over the water. Mamaieff's face turned livid, and the judge, with knitted brow and with a look of intense anxiety, watched the current which was driving enormous blue-grey heaps of ice against the boats. The smaller pieces grated against the keel with a sound of sharp teeth gnawing through the wooden planks.
The air was damp and full of noises; our eyes were anxiously fixed on the cold, dirty ice—so powerful and yet so helpless. Through the various noises around us I suddenly distinguished the voice of someone shouting from the shore, and glancing in the direction of the sound I saw Kireelka standing bareheaded on the bank behind us. There was a twinkle in his cunning grey eyes as he shouted in a strange, hoarse voice, "Uncle Anthony, when you go to fetch the mail mind you don't forget to bring some bread for me! The gentry have eaten my loaf of bread whilst they were waiting for the ferry; and it was the last I had!"
[THE AFFAIR OF THE CLASPS]
There were three of us friends—Semka[1] Kargouza, myself, and Mishka,[2] a bearded giant with great blue eyes that perpetually beamed on everything and were always swollen from drink. We lived in a field beyond the town in an old tumbledown building, called for some reason "the glass factory," perhaps because there was not a single whole pane in its windows, and undertook all kinds of work, despising nothing; cleaned yards, dug ditches and sewers, pulled down old buildings and fences, and once even tried to build a henhouse. But in this we were unsuccessful. Semka, who was pedantically honest about the duties he took upon himself, began to doubt our knowledge of the architecture of hen-houses, and one day at noon, when we were all resting, took the nails that had been given out to us, two new planks, and the master's axe to the public-house. For this we lost our work, but as we possessed nothing no one demanded compensation.
[1] An abbreviation or diminutive of Simon, used to express intimacy or contempt.—TR.
[2] An abbreviation or diminutive of Michael, used to express intimacy or contempt. Bears are nicknamed Mishka in Russia.—TR.