If you want to resign, say so!"
"Wait a moment, Comrades, I have all the moves written down."
"Written down my foot!"
"This is disgraceful!" yelled one-eye. "Give me back the rook!"
"Come on, resign, and stop this fooling about."
"Give me back my rook!"
At this point the Grossmeister, realizing that procrastination was the thief of time, seized a handful of chessmen and threw them in his one-eyed opponent's face.
"Comrades!" shrieked one-eye. "Look, everyone, he's hitting an amateur!"
The chess players of Vasyuki were aghast.
Without wasting valuable time, Ostap hurled a chessboard at the lamp and, hitting out at jaws and faces in the ensuing darkness, ran out into the street.
The Vasyuki chess enthusiasts, falling over each other, tore after him.
It was a moonlit evening.
Ostap bounded along the silvery street as lightly as an angel repelled from the sinful earth.
On account of the interrupted transformation of Vasyuki into the centre of the world, it was not between palaces that Ostap had to run, but wooden houses with outside shutters.
The chess enthusiasts raced along behind.
"Catch the Grossmeister!" howled one-eye.
"Twister!" added the others.
"Jerks!" snapped back the Grossmeister, increasing his speed.
"Stop him!" cried the outraged chess players.
Ostap began running down the steps leading down to the quay.
He had four hundred steps to go.
Two enthusiasts, who had taken a short cut down the hillside, were waiting for him at the bottom of the sixth flight.
Ostap looked over his shoulder.
The advocates of Philidor's defence were pouring down the steps like a pack of wolves.
There was no way back, so he kept on going.
"Just wait till I get you, you bastards!" he shouted at the two-man advance party, hurtling down from the sixth flight.
The frightened troopers gasped, fell over the balustrade, and rolled down into the darkness of mounds and slopes.
The path was clear.
"Stop the Grossmeister !" echoed shouts from above.
The pursuers clattered down the wooden steps with a noise like falling skittle balls.
Reaching the river bank, Ostap made to the right, searching with his eyes for the boat containing his faithful manager.
Ippolit Matveyevich was sitting serenely in the boat.
Ostap dropped heavily into a seat and began rowing for all he was worth.
A minute later a shower of stones flew in the direction of the boat, one of them hitting Ippolit Matveyevich.
A yellow bruise appeared on the side of his face just above the volcanic pimple.
Ippolit Matveyevich hunched his shoulders and began whimpering.
"You are a softie!
They practically lynched me, but I'm still happy and cheerful.
And if you take the fifty roubles net profit into account, one bump on the head isn't such an unreasonable price to pay."
In the meantime, the pursuers, who had only just realized that their plans to turn Vasyuki into New Moscow had collapsed and that the Grossmeister was absconding with fifty vital Vasyukian roubles, piled into a barge and, with loud shouts, rowed out into midstream.
Thirty people were crammed into the boat, all of whom were anxious to take a personal part in settling the score with the Grossmeister.
The expedition was commanded by one-eye, whose single peeper shone in the night like a lighthouse.
"Stop the Grossmeister!" came shouts from the overloaded barge.
"We must step on it, Pussy!" said Ostap. "If they catch up with us, I won't be responsible for the state of your pince-nez."
Both boats were moving downstream.
The gap between them was narrowing.
Ostap was going all out.
"You won't escape, you rats!" people were shouting from the barge.
Ostap had no time to answer.
His oars flashed in and out of the water, churning it up so that it came down in floods in the boat.