“Would you care to put some rum in your tea?” I said to my companion. “I have some white rum with me—from Tiflis; and the weather is cold now.”
“No, thank you, sir; I don’t drink.”
“Really?”
“Just so. I have sworn off drinking. Once, you know, when I was a sub-lieutenant, some of us had a drop too much. That very night there was an alarm, and out we went to the front, half seas over! We did catch it, I can tell you, when Aleksei Petrovich came to hear about us! Heaven save us, what a rage he was in! He was within an ace of having us court-martialled. That’s just how things happen! You might easily spend a whole year without seeing a soul; but just go and have a drop and you’re a lost man!”
On hearing this I almost lost hope.
“Take the Circassians, now,” he continued; “once let them drink their fill of buza [6] at a wedding or a funeral, and out will come their knives. On one occasion I had some difficulty in getting away with a whole skin, and yet it was at the house of a ‘friendly’ [7] prince, where I was a guest, that the affair happened.”
“How was that?” I asked.
“Here, I’ll tell you.”...
He filled his pipe, drew in the smoke, and began his story.