the clamour of the bystanders aroused me to a
certain longing to outshout them all, to send forth my voice into the
night like the voice of a brazen trumpet.

Presently two other men approached us. In the hand of the first was a
torch which he kept waving to and fro to prevent its being
extinguished, and whence, therefore, he kept strewing showers of golden
sparks. A fair-headed little fellow, he had a body as thin as a pike
when standing on its tail, a grey, stonelike countenance that was
deeply sunken between the shoulders, a mouth perpetually half-agape,
and round, owlish-looking eyes.

As he approached the corpse he bent forward with one hand upon his knee
to throw the more light upon Silantiev's bruised head and body. That
head was resting turned upon the shoulder, and no longer could I
recognise the once handsome Cossack face, so buried was the jaunty
forelock under a clot of black-red mud, and concealed by a swelling
which had made its appearance above the left ear. Also, since the mouth
and moustache had been bashed aside the teeth lay bared in a twisted,
truly horrible smile, while, as the most horrible point of all, the
left eye was hanging from its socket, and, become hideously large,
gazing, seemingly, at the inner pocket of the flap of Silantiev's
pea-jacket, whence there was protruding a white edging of paper.

Slowly the torch holder described a circle of fire in the air, and
thereby sprinkled a further shower of sparks over the poor mutilated
face, with its streaks of shining blood. Then he muttered with a smack
of the lips:

"You can see for yourselves who the man is."

As he spoke a few more sparks descended upon Silantiev's scalp and wet
cheeks, and went out, while the flare's reflection so played in the
ball of Silantiev's eye as to communicate to it an added appearance of
death.

Finally the torch holder straightened his back, threw his torch into
the river, expectorated after it, and said to his companion as he
smoothed a flaxen poll which, in the darkness, looked almost greenish:

"Do you go to the barraque, and tell them that a man has been done to
death."

"No; I should be afraid to go alone."

"Come, come! Nothing is there to be afraid of. Go, I tell you."

"But I would much rather not."

"Don't be such a fool!"

Suddenly there sounded over my head the quiet voice of the foreman.

"I will accompany you," he said. Then he added disgustedly as he
scraped his foot against a stone