Again. Crush it! Now, once more! Try!"
"Well, Ignat," asked his friend Mayakin, coming up to him, "the
ice is crushing about ten thousand out of your purse, eh?"
"That's nothing! I'll make another hundred. But look how the
Volga is working! Eh? Fine? She can split the whole world, like
curd, with a knife. Look, look! There you have my 'Boyarinya!'
She floated but once. Well, we'll have mass said for the dead."
The barge was crushed into splinters. Ignat and the godfather,
sitting in the tavern on the shore, drank vodka and looked out of
the window, watching the fragments of the "Boyarinya" drifting
down the river together with the ice.
"Are you sorry for the vessel, Ignat?" asked Mayakin.
"Why should I be sorry for it? The Volga gave it to me, and the
Volga has taken it back. It did not tear off my hand."
"Nevertheless."
"What--nevertheless? It is good at least that I saw how it was
all done. It's a lesson for the future. But when my 'Volgar' was
burned--I was really sorry--I didn't see it. How beautiful it
must have looked when such a woodpile was blazing on the water
in the dark night! Eh? It was an enormous steamer.
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