Shivering in the damp night air, the concessionaires went back to their cabin filled with doubts.
"Well, at any rate we found something," said Bender.
Ippolit Matveyevich took the box from his pocket and looked at it in a daze.
"Come on, come on!
What are you goggling at?"
The box was opened.
On the bottom lay a copper plate, green with age, which said:
WITH THIS CHAIR CRAFTSMAN HAMBS begins a new batch of furniture
St. Petersburg 1865
Ostap read the inscription aloud.
"But where are the jewels?" asked Ippolit Matveyevich.
"You're remarkably shrewd, my dear chair-hunter. As you see, there aren't any."
Vorobyaninov was pitiful to look at.
His slightly sprouting moustache twitched and the lenses of his pince-nez were misty.
He looked as though he was about to beat his face with his ears in desperation.
The cold, sober voice of the smooth operator had its usual magic effect.
Vorobyaninov stretched his hands along the seams of his worn trousers and kept quiet.
"Shut up, sadness. Shut up, Pussy.
Some day we'll have the laugh on the stupid eighth chair in which we found the silly box.
Cheer up!
There are three more chairs aboard; ninety-nine chances out of a hundred."
During the night a volcanic pimple erupted on the aggrieved Ippolit Matveyevich's cheek.
All his sufferings, all his setbacks, and the whole ordeal of the jewel hunt seemed to be summed up in the pimple, which was tinged with mother-of-pearl, sunset cherry and blue.
"Did you do that on purpose? " asked Ostap.
Ippolit Matveyevich sighed convulsively and went to fetch the paints, his tall figure slightly bent, like a fishing rod.
The transparent was begun.
The concessionaires worked on the upper deck.
And the third day of the voyage commenced.
It commenced with a brief clash between the brass band and the sound effects over a place to rehearse.
After breakfast, the toughs with the brass tubes and the slender knights with the Esmarch douches both made their way to the stern at the same time.
Galkin managed to get to the bench first.
A clarinet from the brass band came second.
"The seat's taken," said Galkin sullenly.
"Who by?" asked the clarinet ominously.
"Me, Galkin."
"Who else?"
"Palkin, Malkin, Chalkin and Zalkind."
"Haven't you got a Yolkin as well?
This is our seat."
Reinforcements were brought up on both sides.
The most powerful machine in the band was the helicon, encircled three times by a brass serpent.
The French horn swayed to and fro, looking like a human ear, and the trombones were in a state of readiness for action.
The sun was reflected a thousand times in their armour.
Beside them the sound effects looked dark and small.
Here and there a bottle glinted, the enema douches glimmered faintly, and the saxophone, that outrageous take-off of a musical instrument, was pitiful to see.
"The enema battalion," said the bullying clarinet, "lays claim to this seat."
"You," said Zalkind, trying to find the most cutting expression he could, "you are the conservatives of music!"
"Don't prevent us rehearsing."
"It's you who're preventing us.
The less you rehearse on those chamber-pots of yours, the nicer it sounds."