“I didn’t mean anything, mates . . .” the disconcerted youth tried to explain.
“Do you want me to keep covers over you all? Or to keep you in pickle through the winter?” shouted the sergeant again, looking in perplexity at the crowd of twenty convicts who stood not knowing how to set to work. “Begin! Make haste!”
“You can’t do things quicker than you can, Ivan Matveitch.”
“Why, but you are doing nothing! Hey, Savelyev! Talky Petrovitch ought to be your name! I ask you, why are you standing there, rolling your eyes! Set to work!”
“But what can I do alone?”
“Set us a task, Ivan Matveitch.”
“You’ve been told you won’t have a task. Break up the barge and go home. Get to work!”
They did set to work at last, but listlessly, unwillingly, incompetently. It was quite provoking to see a sturdy crowd of stalwart workmen who seemed utterly at a loss how to set to work. As soon as they began to take out the first and smallest beam, it appeared that it was breaking, “breaking of itself,” as was reported to the overseer by way of apology; so it seemed they could not begin that way but must try somehow else. There followed a lengthy discussion among the convicts what other way to try, what was to be done? By degrees it came, of course, to abuse and threatened to go further. . . . The sergeant shouted again and waved his stick, but the beam broke again. It appeared finally that axes were not enough, and other tools were needed. Two fellows were dispatched with a convoy to the fortress to fetch them, and meantime the others very serenely sat down on the barge, pulled out their pipes and began smoking again.
The sergeant gave it up as a bad job at last.
“Well, you’ll never make work look silly! Ach, what a set, what a set!” he muttered angrily, and with a wave of his hand he set off for the fortress, swinging his stick.
An hour later the foreman came. After listening calmly to the convicts he announced that the task he set them was to get out four more beams without breaking them, and in addition he marked out a considerable portion of the barge to be taken to pieces, telling them that when it was done they could go home. The task was a large one, but, heavens! how they set to! There was no trace of laziness, no trace of incompetence. The axes rang; they began unscrewing the wooden bolts. Others thrust
