horse!’—‘Then how’s it, lad,’ they say, ‘how’s them Mopingers, be they born hand in hand?’ ” He said this in a hoarse bass, pretending to imitate a peasant. “ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘he’s naturally like that. Tear their hands apart, and they’ll bleed just like a Chinaman: take a Chinaman’s cap off, and it’ll bleed.’—‘And tell us, lad, how do they fight?’—‘That’s how,’ says I, ‘they catch you and rip your belly up and wind your bowels round your arm, and wind and wind. They go on winding and you go on laughing till your breath all goes.’ ”
“Well, and did they believe you, Chikin?” said Maksimov with a slight smile, while all the rest were dying with laughter.
“Such queer people, Theodor Maksimov, they believe everything. On my word they do. But when I told them about Mount Kazbec, and said that the snow didn’t melt on it all the summer, they mocked at me! ‘What are you bragging for, lad,’ they says; ‘a big mountain and the snow on it don’t melt? Why, lad, when the thaw sets in here, every tiny bit of a hillock thaws first, while the snow still lies in the hollows.’ There now!” Chikin concluded with a wink.