tood still or got out of our way, without knowing what was going
on. I remember an old retired major, who was a great hunter, suddenly
appeared at his window, and, his face crimson, leaning halfway out, he
cried aloud, "Tally ho!" as if he were at a chase. "Stop them!" they
kept crying behind us. David ran, swinging the watch over his head,
only seldom jumping: I also jumped at the same places.

"Where?" I cried to David, seeing him turn from the street into a
little lane, into which I also turned.

"To the Oka," he answered. "Into the water with it! into the river!"
"Stop! stop!" they roared behind us. But we were already running along
the lane. A puff of cool air meets us, and there is the river, and the
dirty steep bank, and the wooden bridge with a long train of wagons,
and the sentinel armed with a pike stands at the toll-gate. In those
days the soldiers used to carry pikes. David is already on the bridge:
he dashes by the sentinel, who tries to trip him up with his pike,
and instead hits a calf coming the other way. David jumps on the rail,
utters a great cry, and something white and something blue flash and
sparkle through the air: they are the silver watch and Wassily's
row of pearls flying into the water. But then something incredible
happens. After the watch fly David's feet and his whole body, head
downward, hands foremost: his coat, flying in the air, describes a
curve through the air--in hot days frightened frogs jump just that way
from a height into the water--and disappears over the railing of the
bridge, and then, flash! and a great shower of water is dashed up from
below. What I did I am sure I do not know. I was only a few steps from
David when he sprang from the railing, but I can't remember whether
I cried out. I don't think I was even frightened: it was as if I had
been struck by lightning. I lost all consciousness: my hands and feet
were powerless. People ran and pushed by me: some of them it seemed as
if I knew. Suddenly Trofimytsch appeared. The sentinel ran off to one
side: the horses walked hastily over the bridge, their heads in the
air. Then everything grew green, and some one was beating my neck
and down my back. I had fainted. I remember that I rose, and when
I noticed that no one was paying any attention to me, I went to the
railing, but not on the side from which David had jumped--to go there
seemed to me terrible--but to the other side, and looked down into the
blue, swollen stream. I r