“‘And my father—the bright moon;
My brothers are the many stars,
And my sisters—the white dawns!’”
And while he sang, he won and gathered in the roubles. Then the other, a smaller and paler rogue, who had his knife drawn under the table, began to quarrel with him, purposely, as I saw.
“Ivan Andreivitch,” he growled, “you sing and cheat—look you, the gold is mine!”
The big fellow laughed and brought his fist down on the table.
“Curse you, Nikolas!” he roared, “’tis mine, you thief, and son of a thief!”
At which the white face—sudden and swift as a tiger—thrust him in the breast with his long knife, and the other sighed and rolled over—dead—upon the table.
Then did I see terror—terror of men and angels—on the murderer’s face. He stood with his knife dripping, his features set like a mask, his eyes staring, his teeth chattering, and he looked askance even at the dead. It was the fit that comes upon some men after they have killed. So he stood, for full ten minutes, and then gathering up the gold with eager hands, and hiding it about his person, he turned and fled out into the night.
And I sat and stared. There was the same low room, only one torch burning now, and on the floor dead men and drunken sleepers, and no one to watch. Surely, no man ever saw a sight more horrid or more blasting, but I had no time to meditate upon it. I set to work to gnaw at my bonds and struggled to be free, and yet to no purpose. I could neither bite nor break them, and the golden moments slipped away—as sand runs through the fingers. I struggled desperately; I even succeeded so far as to roll over, chair and all, upon the floor, but, though the crash of my fall startled all the sleepers, it did not break a cord, and I lay—no better off—bound fast upon the floor. The noise that I made in falling had roused one of the wretches, however, so far that he did not sink back, as the others did, into slumber. Instead, he raised himself on his elbow and watched me struggle, and, at last, he began to put two and two together, and his thirst came upon him and he sat up and stared at me.