"Be quiet, all of you," cried old Tsajkos, as he thrust the crowd back. "You don't know what you're talking about. Stop your barking and listen to me. He may be a spy, but he only betrays the gentry, and he'll never turn on us poor folk. If a great lord robs or steals, he's down upon him, but never on us."
"That's another matter," shouted the rest. "Then we'll be friends with him."
And Ráby had thereupon to submit to the rough greetings of his new comrades in misfortune.
"They are not a bad sort," remarked Tsajkos, and he proceeded to point out each individual member of the crew to Ráby, specifying which was a horse-stealer, and which a highwayman, identifying as well the thieves and incendiaries among them. Most of them, however, it turned out, were murderers.
To Ráby the whole thing seemed more and more like a ghastly dream. Yet his five senses warranted its reality: the low vault of the cell which surrounded him, the fierce criminal faces of the prisoners, the clinking of the fetters, the dirty grimy hands that grasped his own, the damp, mouldy odour of the dungeon, the taste of the brackish water from the prison well that the old man handed him to revive him—all these things warned him that this was no dream, but a grim reality from which he must find a speedy means of escaping.
He looked round, but his companion misconstrued the glance.
"You are wondering how you will manage to get forty winks here, eh, comrade? Yes, it's a difficult matter, I warrant you; all the places are taken, and each one has a right to his own. Unless Pápis will let you have his corner for the night, I really don't see how you are going to manage it."
"Why not, pray?" exclaimed a voice from another corner. "Of course I will, if I get well paid for it!"
Pápis was a gipsy felon, already pretty advanced in years, his complexion wrinkled and tanned like parchment, yet his hair was quite black, and his teeth shone like ivory.
"Bravo, Pápis!" cried the old man, while the lithe gipsy crawled between the others and grinned at Ráby.