"Don't hurry me. When I'm through talking to you I'll go. Tell me how you're getting on. Are your wife and children well?"
Accompanying his words with a terrible glance, and showing his teeth in a mocking grin, he added:
"I'm always intending to make you a visit, but I never have the time:
I'm always drunk—"
"That'll do, that'll do, drop that—Stop joking, bony devil! If you don't, comrade, I—Or do you really intend to rob houses and streets?"
"Why? There's enough here for both of us. My God, yes!—Semenitch! You've stolen two boxes of goods again?—Look out, Semenitch, be careful! Or you'll be caught one of these days!"
Semenitch trembled with anger at the impudence of Tchelkache; he spat upon the ground in a vain effort to speak. Tchelkache let go his hand and turned back quietly and deliberately at the entrance to the wharf. The officer, swearing like a trooper, followed him.
Tchelkache had recovered his spirits; he whistled softly between his teeth, and, thrusting his hands in his trousers' pockets, walked slowly, like a man who has nothing to do, throwing to the right and left scathing remarks and jests. He received replies in kind.
"Happy Grichka, what good care the authorities take of him!" cried someone in a group of 'longshoremen who had eaten their dinner and were lying, stretched out on the ground.
"I have no shoes; Semenitch is afraid that I may hurt my feet," replied
Tchelkache.
They reached the gate. Two soldiers searched Tchelkache and pushed him gently aside.