smack--and the work stopped instantaneously.

Platonov with enjoyment straightened out his back and bent it backward,
and spread out his swollen arms. With pleasure he thought of having
already gotten over that first pain in all the muscles, which tells so
during the first days, when one is just getting back into the work
after disuse. While up to this day, awaking in the mornings in his lair
on Temnikovskaya--also to the sound of a factory blast agreed upon--he
would during the first minutes experience such fearful pains in his
neck, back, in his arms and legs, that it seemed to him as if only a
miracle would be able to compel him to get up and make a few steps.

"Go-o-o and e-at," Zavorotny began to clamour again.

The stevedores went down to the water; got down on their knees or laid
down flat on the gangplank or on the rafts; and, scooping up the water
in handfuls, washed their wet, heated faces and arms. Right here, too,
on the shore, to one side, where a little grass had been left yet, they
disposed themselves for dinner: placed in a circle ten of the most ripe
watermelons, black bread, and twenty dried porgies. Gavriushka the
Bullet was already running with a half-gallon bottle to the pot-house
and was singing as he went the soldiers' signal for dinner:

"Drag spoon and mess-kit out,
If there's no bread, eat without."

A bare-footed urchin, dirty and so ragged that there was more of his
bare body than clothes upon him, ran up to the gang.

"Which one of you here is Platonov?" he asked, quickly running over
them with his thievish eyes.

"I'm Platonov, and by what name do they tease you?"

"Around the corner here, behind the church, some sort of a young lady
is waiting for you...Here's a note for you."

The whole gang neighed deeply.

"What d'you open up your mouths for, you pack of fools!" said Platonov
calmly. "Give me the note here."

This was a letter from Jennka, written in a round, naive, rolling,
childish handwriting, and not very well spelt.

"Sergei Ivanich. Forgive me that I disturbe you. I must talk over a
very, very important matter with you. I would not be troubling you if
it was Trifles. For only 10 minutes in all. Jennka, whom you know, from
Anna Markovna's."

Platonov got up.

"I'm going away for a little while," he said to Zavorotny. "When you
begin, I'll be in my place."

"Now you've found somethin' to do," lazily and contemptuously said the
head of the gang. "There's th