merry and contented.

"We've raised a hundred and seventy thousand puds as if we plucked a
radish from a garden-bed!" said some one.

"We ought to get a vedro of whisky from our master."

Foma, standing on a heap of cable, looked over the heads of the workers
and saw; between the barges, side by side with them, stood a third
barge, black, slippery, damaged, wrapped in chains. It was warped all
over, it seemed as though it swelled from some terrible disease and,
impotent, clumsy, it was suspended between its companions, leaning
against them. Its broken mast stood out mournfully in the centre;
reddish streams of water, like blood, were running across the deck,
which was covered with stains of rust. Everywhere on the deck lay heaps
of iron, of black, wet stumps of wood, and of ropes.

"Raised?" asked Foma, not knowing what to say at the sight of this ugly,
heavy mass, and again feeling offended at the thought that merely for
the sake of raising this dirty, bruised monster from the water, his soul
had foamed up with such joy.

"How's the barge?" asked Foma, indefinitely, addressing the contractor.

"It's pretty good! We must unload right away, and put a company of about
twenty carpenters to work on it--they'll bring it quickly into shape,"
said the contractor in a consoling tone.

And the light-haired fellow, gaily and broadly smiling into Foma's face,
asked:

"Are we going to have any vodka?"

"Can't you wait? You have time!" said the contractor, sternly. "Don't
you see--the man is tired."

Then the peasants began to speak:

"Of course, he is tired!

"That wasn't easy work!"

"Of course, one gets tired if he isn't used to work."

"It is even hard to eat gruel if you are not used to it."

"I am not tired," said Foma, gloomily, and again were heard the
respectful exclamations of the peasants, as they surrounded him more
closely.

"Work, if one likes it, is a pleasant thing."

"It's just like play."

"It's like playing with a woman."

But the light-haired fellow persisted in his request:

"Your Honour! You ought to treat us to a vedro of vodka, eh?" he said,
smiling and sighing.

Foma looked at the bearded faces before him and felt like saying
something offensive to them. But somehow everything became confused
in his brain, he found no thoughts in it and, finally, without giving
himself an account of his words, said angrily:

"All you want is to drink all the time! It makes no difference to you