"I congratulate you on a successful result, Foma Ignatyich!" the
contractor congratulated him and the wrinkles quivered on his
face in cheerful beams.
"Thank God! You must be quite tired now?"
Cold wind blew in Foma's face. A contented, boastful bustle was
in the air about him; swearing at one another in a friendly way,
merry, with smiles on their perspiring brows, the peasants
approached him and surrounded him closely. He smiled in
embarrassment: the excitement within him had not yet calmed down
and this hindered him from understanding what had happened and
why all those who surrounded him were so merry and contented.
"We've raised a hundred and seventy thousand puds as if we
plucked a radish from a garden-bed!" said some one.
"We ought to get a vedro of whisky from our master."
Foma, standing on a heap of cable, looked over the heads of the
workers and saw; between the barges, side by side with them,
stood a third barge, black, slippery, damaged, wrapped in chains.
It was warped all over, it seemed as though it swelled from some
terrible disease and, impotent, clumsy, it was suspended between
its companions, leaning against them.
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