maiden came,
To find his soul had fled."

Whereupon the old soldier shouted:

"Hi, you! Have you forgotten the day?"

And even Boev saw fit to take umbrage at the singing, and, threatening
Diatlov with his fist, to rap out:

"Ah, sobatchnia dusha!" ["Soul of a dog."]

"What a rude, rough, primitive lot we Russians are!" commented Ossip,
seating himself atop of the icebreaker, and screwing up his eyes to
measure its fall. "To speak plainly, we Russians are sheer barbarians.
Once upon a time, I may tell you, an anchorite happened to be on his
travels; and as the people came pressing around him, and kneeling to
him, and tearfully beseeching him with the words, 'Oh holy father,
intercede for us with the wolves which are devouring our substance!' he
replied: 'Ha! Are you, or are you not, Orthodox Christians? See that I
assign you not to condign perdition!' Yes, angry, in very truth he was.
Nay, he even spat in the people's faces. Yet in reality he was a kindly
old man, for his eyes kept shedding tears equally with theirs."

Twenty sazheni below the icebreaker was a gang of barefooted sailors,
engaged in hacking out the floes from under their barges; and as they
shattered the brittle, greyish-blue crust on the river, the mattocks
rang out, and the sharp blades of the icecutters gleamed as they thrust
the broken fragments under the surface. Meanwhile, there could be heard
a bubbling of water, and the sound of rivulets trickling down to the
sandy margin of the river. And similarly among our own gang was there
audible a scraping of planes, and a screeching of saws, and a
clattering of iron braces as they were driven into the smooth yellow
wood, while through all the web of these sounds there ran the ceaseless
song of the bells, a song so softened by distance as to thrill the
soul, much as though dingy, burdensome labour were holding revel in
honour of spring, and calling upon the latter to spread itself over the
starved, naked surface of the gradually thawing ground.

At this point someone shouted hoarsely:

"Go and fetch the German. We have not got hands enough."

And from the bank someone bawled in reply:

"Where IS he?"

"In the tavern. That is where you must go and look for him."

And as they made themselves heard, the voices floated up turgidly into
the sodden air, spread themselves over the river's mournful void, and
died away.

Meanwhile our men worked with industry and speed, but not without a
fault o