The voice of the ex-soldier replied:
"What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians, fellows who are for ever singing hymns."
To which someone else added:
"Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all building work before the beginning of a Sunday?"
"Let us throw their tools into the stream."
"Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted before the embers of the fire.
Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces—at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and then the strident, hilarious command:
"Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just hand over the saw!"
Apparently there were three men in charge of the proceedings: the one a red-bearded muzhik in a seaman's blouse; the second a tall man with hunched shoulders, thin legs, and long arms who kept grasping the foreman by the collar, shaking him, and bawling, "Where are your lathes? Bring them out!" (while noticeable also was a broad-shouldered young fellow in a ragged red shirt who kept thrusting pieces of scantling through the windows of the barraque, and shouting, "Catch hold of these! Lay them out in a row!"); and the third the ex-soldier himself. The last-named, as he jostled his way among the crowd, kept vociferating, viciously, virulently, and with a curious system of division of his syllables:
"Aha-a, ra-abble, secta-arians. Yo-ou would have nothing to say to me, you Se-erbs! Yet I say to YOU: Go along, my chickens, for the re-est of us are ti-ired of you, and come to sa-ay so!"