ork and with skill. Four
parties, each of five men, worked on each barge. Number one would reach
for a watermelon and pass it on to the second, who was standing on the
side of the barge. The second cast it to the third, standing already on
the wharf; the third threw it over to the fourth; while the fourth
handed it up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid the
watermelons away--now dark-green, now white, now striped--into even
glistening rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses rapidly.
When a good party is gotten up, it is a pleasure to see how the
watermelons fly from hand to hand, are caught with a circus-like
quickness and success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly, in
order to fill up the dray. It is only difficult for the novices, that
have not as yet gained the skill, have not caught on to that especial
sense of the tempo. And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as
to be able to throw it.

Platonov remembered well his first experiences of last year. What
swearing--virulent, mocking, coarse--poured down upon him when for the
third or fourth time he had been gaping and had slowed up the passing:
two watermelons, not thrown in time, had smashed against the pavement
with a succulent crunch, while the completely lost Platonov dropped the
one which he was holding in his hands as well. The first time they
treated him gently; on the second day, however, for every mistake they
began to deduct from him five kopecks per watermelon out of the common
share. The following time when this happened, they threatened to throw
him out of the party at once, without any reckoning. Platonov even now
still remembered how a sudden fury seized him: "Ah, so? The devil take
you!" he had thought. "And yet you want me to be chary of your
watermelons? So then, here you are, here you are! ..." This flare-up
helped him as though instantaneously. He carelessly caught the
watermelons, just as carelessly threw them over, and to his amazement
suddenly felt that precisely just now he had gotten into the real swing
of the work with all his muscles, sight, and breathing; and understood,
that the most important thing was not to think at all of the
watermelons representing some value, and that then everything went
well. When he, finally, had fully mastered this art, it served him for
a long time as a pleasant and entertaining athletic game of its own
kind. But that, too, passed away. He reached, in, the end, the stage
w