But the passengers rushed wildly about the deck, and now those traveling in the other classes had come up, too. Some one jumped overboard. He was followed by another, and yet a third. Two peasants and a monk with heavy pieces of wood broke off a bench which was screwed to the desk. A large cage of fowls was thrown into the water from the stern. In the center of the deck, near the steps leading to the captain’s bridge, knelt a peasant who prostrated himself before the people as they rushed past him, and howled like a wolf:
“I am Orthodox and a sinner — ”
“To the boats, you devils!” cried a fat gentleman who wore only trousers and no shirt, and he beat his breast with his fist.
The sailors came running, seized people by the collars, knocked their heads together, and threw them on the deck.
Smouri approached heavily, wearing his overcoat over his night-clothes, addressed them all in a resounding voice:
“Yes, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
What are you making all this fuss for?
Has the steamer stopped, eh? Are we going slower?
There is the shore.
Those fools who jumped into the water have caught the life-belts, they have had to drag them out. There they are. Do you see? Two boats — ”
He struck the third-class passengers on the head with his fist, and they sank like sacks to the deck.
The confusion was not yet hushed when a lady in a cloak flew to Smouri with a tablespoon in her hand, and, flourishing it in his face, cried:
“How dare you?”
A wet gentleman, restraining her, sucked his mustache and said irritably:
“Let him alone, you imbecile!”
Smouri, spreading out his hands, blinked with embarrassment, and asked me:
“What’s the matter, eh?
What does she want with me?
This is nice, I must say!
Why, I never saw her before in my life!”
And a peasant, with his nose bleeding, cried:
“Human beings, you call them?
Robbers!”
Before the summer I had seen two panics on board the steamboat, and on both occasions they were caused not by real danger, but by the mere possibility of it.
On a third occasion the passengers caught two thieves, one of them was dressed like a foreigner, beat them for almost an hour, unknown to the sailors, and when the latter took their victims away from them, the passengers abused them.
“Thieves shield thieves. That is plain.
You are rogues yourselves, and you sympathize with rogues.”
The thieves had been beaten into unconsciousness. They could not stand when they were handed over to the police at the next stopping-place.
There were many other occasions on which my feelings were aroused to a high pitch, and I could not make up my mind as to whether people were bad or good, peaceful or mischief-making, and why they were so peculiarly cruel, lusting to work malevolence, and ashamed of being kind.
I asked the cook about this, but he enveloped his face in a cloud of smoke, and said briefly in a tone of vexation:
“What are you chattering about now?
Human creatures are human creatures.
Some are clever, some are fools.
Read, and don’t talk so much.
In books, if they are the right sort, you will find all you want to know.”
I wanted to please him by giving him a present of some books.
In Kazan I bought, for five copecks,
“The Story of how a Soldier Saved Peter the Great”; but at that time the cook was drinking and was very cross, so I began to read it myself.
I was delighted with it, it was so simple, easy to understand, interesting, and short.
I felt that this book would give great pleasure to my teacher; but when I took it to him he silently crushed it in his hand into a round ball and threw it overboard.
“That for your book, you fool!” he said harshly.
“I teach you like a dog, and all you want to do is to gobble up idle tales, eh?”
He stamped and roared.
“What kind of book is that?
Do I read nonsense?
Is what is written there true?
Well, speak!”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I do know.
If a man’s head were cut off, his body would fall down the staircase, and the other man would not have climbed on the haystack. Soldiers are not fools.