"Why, you funny fellow!" replied Gavrilo, again intimidated, "am I
speaking of you? There are a great many like you! My God, how many
unfortunate persons, vagabonds there are on the earth!"

"Take the oars again, dolt!" commanded Tchelkache shortly, restraining
himself from pouring forth a string of fierce oaths that rose in his
throat.

They again changed places. Tchelkache, while clambering over the
bales to return to the helm, experienced a sharp desire to give Gavrilo
a good blow that would send him overboard, and, at the same time, he
could not muster strength to look him in the face.

The short conversation was ended; but now Gavrilo's silence even
savored to Tchelkache of the village. He was lost in thoughts of the
past and forgot to steer his boat; the waves had turned it and it was
now going out to sea. They seemed to understand that this boat had no
aim, and they played with it and lightly tossed it, while their blue
fires flamed up under the oars. Before Tchelkache's inward vision, was
rapidly unfolded a series of pictures of the past--that far distant
past separated from the present by a wall of eleven years of vagrancy.
He saw himself again a child, in the village, he saw his mother,
red-cheeked, fat, with kind gray eyes,--his father, a giant with a
tawny beard and stern countenance,--himself betrothed to Amphissa,
black-eyed with a long braid down her back, plump, easy-going, gay. . .
And then, himself, a handsome soldier of the guard; later, his father,
gray and bent by work, and his mother, wrinkled and bowed. What a
merry-making there was at the village when he had returned after the
expiration of his service! How proud the father was of his Gregori,
the moustached, broad-shouldered soldier, the cock of the village!