"Unfortunately, I have hurt my leg," he replied with his head bent down. "In fact, I am not sure that I can get up."
However, we contrived to raise him and carry him ashore with an arm of his resting on each of our necks. Meanwhile he growled with chattering teeth:
"Aha, you river devils! Drown me if you can! But I've not given you a chance, the Lord be thanked! Hi, look out! The ice won't bear the three of us. Mind how you step, and choose places where the ice is bare of snow. There it's firmer. No, a better plan still would be to leave me where I am."
Next, with a frowning scrutiny of my face, he inquired:
"That notebook of our misdeeds – hasn't it had a wetting and got done for?"
That very moment, as we stepped from the stranded floe (in grounding, it had crushed and shattered a small boat), such part of it as lay in the water gave a loud crack, and, swaying to and fro, and emitting a gurgling sound, floated clear of the rest.
"Ah!" was the Morduine's quizzical comment. "YOU knew well enough what needed to be done."
Wet, and chilled to the bone, though relieved in spirit, we stepped ashore to find a crowd of townspeople in conversation with Boev and the old soldier. And as we deposited our charge under the lea of a pile of logs he shouted cheerfully:
"Mates, Makarei's notebook is done for, soaked through!" And since the notebook in question was weighing upon my breast like a brick, I pulled it out unseen, and hurled it far into the river with a plop like that of a frog.
As for the Diatlovs, they lost no time in setting out in search of vodka in the tavern on the hill, and slapped one another on the back as they ran, and could be heard shouting, "Hurrah, hurrah!"
Upon this, a tall old man with the beard of an apostle and the eyes of a brigand muttered:
"Infidels, why disturb peaceful folk like this? You ought to be thrashed!"
Whereupon Boev, who was changing his clothes, retorted:
"What do you mean by 'disturb'?"
"Besides," put in the old soldier, "even though we are Christians like yourself, we might as well have been drowned for all that you did to help us."
"What could we have done?"
Meanwhile Ossip had remained lying on the ground with one leg stretched out at full length, and tremulous hands fumbling at his greatcoat as under his breath he muttered:
"Holy Mother, how wet I am! My clothes, though I have only worn them a year, are ruined for ever!"
Moreover, he seemed now to have shrunken again in stature – to have become crumpled up like a man run over. Indeed, as he lay he seemed actually to be melting, so continuously was his bulk decreasing in size.
But suddenly he raised himself to a sitting posture, groaned, and exclaimed in high-pitched, wrathful accents:
"May the devil take you all! Be off with you to your washhouses and churches! Yes, be off, for it seems that, as God couldn't keep His holy festival without you, I've had to stand within an ace of death and to spoil my clothes-yes, all that you fellows should be got out of your fix!"
Nevertheless, the men merely continued taking off their boots, and wringing out their clothes, and conversing with sundry gasps and grunts with the bystanders. So presently Ossip resumed:
"What are you thinking of, you fools? The washhouse is the best place for you, for if the police get you, they'll soon find you a lodging, and no mistake!"
One of the townspeople put in officiously:
"Aye, aye. The police have been sent for."
And this led Boev to exclaim to Ossip:
"Why pretend like that?"
"Pretend? I?"
"Yes – you."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that it was you who egged us on to cross the river."
"You say that it was I?"
"I do."
"Indeed?"
"Aye," put in Budirin quietly, but incisively. And him the Morduine supported by saying in a sullen undertone:
"It was you, mate. By God it was. It would seem that you have forgotten."
"Yes, you started all this business," the old soldier corroborated, in dour, ponderous accents.
"Forgotten, indeed? HE?" was Boev's heated exclamation.
"How can you say such a thing? Well, let him not try to shift the responsibility on to others – that's all! WE'LL see, right enough, that he goes through with it!"
To this Ossip made no reply, but gazed frowningly at his dripping, half-clad men.
All at once, with a curious outburst of mingled smiles and tears (it would be hard to say which), he shrugged his shoulders, threw up his hands, and muttered:
"Yes, it IS true. If it please you, it was I that contrived the idea."
"Of COURSE it was!" the old soldier cried triumphantly.
Ossip turned his eyes again to where the river was seething like a bowl of porridge, and, letting his eyes fall with a frown, continued:
"In a moment of forgetfulness I did it. Yet how is it that we were not all drowned? Well, you wouldn't understand even if I were to tell you. No, by God, you wouldn't!.. Don't be angry with me, mates. Pardon me for the festival's sake, for I am feeling uneasy of mind. Yes, I it was that egged you on to cross the river, the old fool that I was!"
"Aha!" exclaimed Boev. "But, had I been drowned, what should you have said THEN?"
In fact, by this time Ossip seemed conscious to the full of the futility and the senselessness of what he had done: and in his state of sliminess, as he sat nodding his head, picking at the sand, looking at no one, and emitting a torrent of remorseful words, he reminded me strongly of a new-born calf.
And as I watched him I thought to myself:
"Where now is the leader of men who could draw his fellows in his train with so much care and skill and authority?"
And into my soul there trickled an uneasy sense of something lacking. Seating myself beside Ossip (for I desired still to retain a measure of my late impression of him), I said to him in an undertone:
"Soon you will be all right again."
With a sideways glance he muttered in reply, as he combed his beard:
"Well, you saw what happened just now. Always do things so happen."
While for the benefit of the men he added:
"That was a good jest of mine, eh?"
The summit of the hill which lay crouching, like a great beast, on the brink of the river was standing out clearly against the fast darkening sky; while a clump of trees thereon had grown black, and everywhere blue shadows of the spring eventide were coming into view, and looming between the housetops where the houses lay pressed like scabs against the hill's opaque surface, and peering from the moist, red jaws of the ravine which, gaping towards the river, seemed as though it were stretching forth for a draught of water.
Also, by now the rustling and crunching of the ice on the similarly darkening river was beginning to assume a deeper note, and at times a floe would thrust one of its extremities into the bank as a pig thrusts its snout into the earth, and there remain motionless before once more beginning to sway, tearing itself free, and floating away down the river as another such floe glided into its place.
And ever more and more swiftly was the water rising, and washing away soil from the bank, and spreading a thick sediment over the dark blue surface of the river. And as it did so, there resounded in the air a strange noise as of chewing and champing, a noise as though some huge wild animal were masticating, and licking itself with its great long tongue.
And still there continued to come from the town the melancholy, distance-softened, sweet-toned song of the bells.
Presently,