“Styopka, run to the village and ask the peasants for a net!

“They won’t give it to me.”

“They will, you ask them.  Tell them that they should give it to us for Christ’s sake, because we are just the same as pilgrims.”

“That’s true.”

Styopka clambered out of the water, dressed quickly, and without a cap on he ran, his full trousers flapping, to the village.  The water lost all its charm for Yegorushka after his encounter with Dymov.  He got out and began dressing.  Panteley and Vassya were sitting on the steep bank, with their legs hanging down, looking at the bathers.  Emelyan was standing naked, up to his knees in the water, holding on to the grass with one hand to prevent himself from falling while the other stroked his body.  With his bony shoulder-blades, with the swelling under his eye, bending down and evidently afraid of the water, he made a ludicrous figure.  His face was grave and severe.  He looked angrily at the water, as though he were just going to upbraid it for having given him cold in the Donets and robbed him of his voice.

“And why don’t you bathe?” Yegorushka asked Vassya.

“Oh, I don’t care for it, . . .” answered Vassya.

“How is it your chin is swollen?”

“It’s bad. . . .  I used to work at the match factory, little sir. . . .  The doctor used to say that it would make my jaw rot.  The air is not healthy there.  There were three chaps beside me who had their jaws swollen, and with one of them it rotted away altogether.”

Styopka soon came back with the net.  Dymov and Kiruha were already turning blue and getting hoarse by being so long in the water, but they set about fishing eagerly.  First they went to a deep place beside the reeds; there Dymov was up to his neck, while the water went over squat Kiruha’s head.  The latter spluttered and blew bubbles, while Dymov stumbling on the prickly roots, fell over and got caught in the net; both flopped about in the water, and made a noise, and nothing but mischief came of their fishing.

“It’s deep,” croaked Kiruha.  “You won’t catch anything.”

“Don’t tug, you devil!” shouted Dymov trying to put the net in the proper position.  “Hold it up.”

“You won’t catch anything here,” Panteley shouted from the bank.  “You are only frightening the fish, you stupids!  Go more to the left!  It’s shallower there!”

Once a big fish gleamed above the net; they all drew a breath, and Dymov struck the place where it had vanished with his fist, and his face expressed vexation.

“Ugh!” cried Panteley, and he stamped his foot.  “You’ve let the perch slip!  It’s gone!”