"Altogether it's a queer, twistified kind o' lingo, jist what you might expect from foreign lubbers. What riled me most when I fust went over was that everybody kep' on callin' me a mattrass, and I'd punched two or three fellers' heads for it afore I found out that 'mattrass' [matross] is their word for a sailor. Jist think o' that, now!
"I can remember as well as if 'twas only yesterday what an outlandish place St. Petersburg seemed when I fust set foot in it. Coachmen in blue frocks and red sashes, nurses with pasteboard crowns on, church towers plated with gold, policemen with swords by their sides, house porters rigged out in sheep-skin, wooden houses painted green and yeller—fact, there was no end to the queer sights all about. And when I got to know their talk a bit, it seemed quite as outlandish to hear 'em call each other 'John the son of Peter,' or 'Paul the son of James,' 'stead o' handlin' one another's names ship-shape.
"And then, again, talk o' bein' thick! why, this here plank 'ud be a joke to 'em. If one of our frigates was to be stuck all over with Rooshians' heads, she wouldn't want no armor-platin'! Now I'll jist tell yer a thing as I seed with my own eyes, and you can believe it or not, as you like. One day when we was a-lying in the river alongside o' the Ostroff Quay, our old man calls up a Rooshian lad that used to do odd jobs for him, and gives him two twenty-kopeck pieces (which are much the same as an English sixpence, or a 'Merican dime), tellin' him one on 'em's to go for bread, and t'other for 'baccy—which was all plain sailing enough, one would think.
"Well, away goes Dmitri, and doesn't come back. So then the old man he sings out for me, and he says, 'Hawkins,' says he, 'just go and see what's gone with Dmitri. I'll be bound the young dog has made a mess of that job.'
"So off I goes to the shop where we used to buy our things, and right at the very door I comes upon Mr. Dmitri, scratchin' his head, and lookin' as if he'd clean lost what few wits he ever had.
"Says I to him, 'Hollo, mate, what's up?'
"Says he, 'What ever am I to do? I've gone and mixed the two pieces, and now I don't know which was the one for the bread, and which was the one for the 'baccy.'[3]
"But I must coil up the slack o' my yarn, or I'll never git it all in; so now to tell yer 'bout that scrape o' mine.
"Right on the river-bank, near the Hadmiralty Building, there's a stattey of Peter the Great, put up by the Hempress Catherine 'bout a hundred years ago; and a real grand affair it is—for Rooshia. It stands on a big block o' gray granite, as was dragged all the way from Finland o' purpose. Peter's on a rearin' horse, pointin' across the river to where he fust began buildin' the town; and there's a sarpent crumpled up under his horse's feet, in sign of his ridin' the high horse over the heathenish ways o' the country.
"Well, I was passin' this stattey one night, comin' back from a jollification with some o' my chums, when (I don't know how it was) it came into my head all to once what a joke it 'ud be to climb up and sit upon the horse. So I scrambles over the railin', and up I goes.