hem,
the more intense was this vexation. And he was stung most by the thought
that all this was being done for him. And yet he was out of place there.

"Where is my place, then?" he thought gloomily. "Where is my work? Am I,
then, some deformed being? I have just as much strength as any of them.
But of what use is it to me?" The chains clanged, the pulleys groaned,
the blows of the axes resounded loud over the river, and the barges
rocked from the shocks of the waves, but to Foma it seemed that he was
rocking not because the barge was rocking under his feet, but rather
because he was not able to stand firmly anywhere, he was not destined to
do so.

The contractor, a small-sized peasant with a small pointed gray beard,
and with narrow little eyes on his gray wrinkled face, came up to him
and said, not loud, but pronouncing his words with a certain tone from
the bottom of the river. He wished that they might not succeed, that
they might feel embarrassed in his presence, and a wicked thought
flashed through his mind:

"Perhaps the chains will break."

"Boys! Attention!" shouted the contractor. "Start all together. God
bless us!" And suddenly, clasping his hands in the air, he cried in a
shrill voice:

"Let--her--go-o-o!"

The labourers took up his shout, and all cried out in one voice, with
excitement and exertion:

"Let her go! She moves."

The pulleys squeaked and creaked, the chains clanked, strained under the
heavy weight that suddenly fell upon them; and the labourers, bracing
their chests against the handle of the windlasses, roared and tramped
heavily. The waves splashed noisily between the barges as though
unwilling to give up their prize to the men. Everywhere about Foma,
chains and ropes were stretched and they quivered from the strain--they
were creeping somewhere across the deck, past his feet, like huge gray
worms; they were lifted upward, link after link, falling back with
a rattling noise, and all these sounds were drowned by the deafening
roaring of the labourers.

"It goes, it goes, it goes," they all sang in unison, triumphantly.
But the ringing voice of the contractor pierced the deep wave of their
voices, and cut it even as a knife cuts bread.

"My boys! Go ahead, all at once, all at once."

Foma was seized with a strange emotion; passionately he now longed to
mingle with this excited roaring of the labourers, which was as broad
and as powerful as the river--to blend with this irritating,