hy are you knocking the jug against his teeth?" said Gusev angrily.
"Don't you see, turnip head?"

"What?"

"What?" Gusev repeated, mimicking him. "There is no breath in him, he is
dead! That's what! What nonsensical people, Lord have mercy on us...!"

III

The ship was not rocking and Pavel Ivanitch was more cheerful. He was
no longer ill-humoured. His face had a boastful, defiant, mocking
expression. He looked as though he wanted to say: "Yes, in a minute
I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with
laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was
blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of
oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning
in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt it was a Chinaman singing.

"Here we are in the harbour," said Pavel Ivanitch, smiling ironically.
"Only another month and we shall be in Russia. Well, worthy gentlemen
and warriors! I shall arrive at Odessa and from there go straight to
Harkov. In Harkov I have a friend, a literary man. I shall go to him and
say, 'Come, old man, put aside your horrid subjects, ladies' amours and
the beauties of nature, and show up human depravity.'"

For a minute he pondered, then said:

"Gusev, do you know how I took them in?"

"Took in whom, Pavel Ivanitch?"

"Why, these fellows.... You know that on this steamer there is only a
first-class and a third-class, and they only allow peasants--that is the
rift-raft--to go in the third. If you have got on a reefer jacket and
have the faintest resemblance to a gentleman or a bourgeois you must go
first-class, if you please. You must fork out five hundred roubles if
you die for it. Why, I ask, have you made such a rule? Do you want to
raise the prestige of educated Russians thereby? Not a bit of it. We
don't let you go third-class simply because a decent person can't go
third-class; it is very horrible and disgusting. Yes, indeed. I am very
grateful for such solicitude for decent people's welfare. But in any
case, whether it is nasty there or nice, five hundred roubles I haven't
got. I haven't pilfered government money. I haven't exploited the
natives, I haven't trafficked in contraband, I have flogged no one to
death, so judge whether I have the right to travel first-class and even
less to reckon myself of the educated class? But you won't catch them
with logic.... One has to resort to deception. I put on a workman's