“Right you are, there!” seconded the other.
“Lived to grin and died in sin. Well, let’s
go, mate, what?”
The cadets ran with all their might. Now, in
the darkness, the figure of Roly-Poly drawn up on
the floor, with his blue face, appeared before them
in all the horror that the dead possess for early
youth; and especially if recalled at night, in the
dark.
A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had
been drizzling since morning. Platonov was working
in the port at the unloading of watermelons.
At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed
to establish himself, luck had turned against him;
after a week he had already quarreled, and almost
had a fight, with the foreman, who was extremely brutal
with the workers. About a month Sergei Ivanovich
had struggled along somehow from hand to mouth, somewheres
in the back-yards of Temnikovskaya Street, dragging
into the editorial rooms of The Echoes, from time to
time, notes of street accidents or little humorous
scenes from the court rooms of the justices of the
peace. But the hard newspaper game had long ago
grown distasteful to him. He was always drawn
to adventures, to physical labour in the fresh air,
to life completely devoid of even the least hint at
comfort; to care-free vagabondage, in which a man,
having cast from him all possible external conditions,
does not know himself what is going to be with him
on the morrow. And for that reason, when from
the lower stretches of the Dnieper the first barges
with watermelons started coming in, he willingly entered
a gang of labourers, in which he was known even from
last year, and loved for his merry nature, for his
comradely spirit, and for his masterly ability of
keeping count.
This labour was carried on with good team work and
with skill. Four parties, each of five men, worked
on each barge. Number one would reach for a watermelon
and pass it on to the second, who was standing on
the side of the barge. The second cast it to the
third, standing already on the wharf; the third threw
it over to the fourth; while the fourth handed it
up to the fifth, who stood on a horse cart and laid
the watermelons away—now dark-green, now
white, now striped—into even glistening
rows. This work is clean, lively, and progresses
rapidly. When a good party is gotten up, it is
a pleasure to see how the watermelons fly from hand
to hand, are caught with a circus-like quickness and
success, and anew, and anew, without a break, fly,
in order to fill up the dray. It is only difficult
for the novices, that have not as yet gained the skill,
have not caught on to that especial sense of the tempo.
And it is not as difficult to catch a watermelon as
to be able to throw it.
