As a matter of fact, the merchant was drowned. They sought for him for two hours, and failed to find him. His companion, sobered, sat on the deck, and, panting heavily, muttered plaintively:
"We are almost there. What will happen when we arrive, eh? What will his family say? He had a family."
Yaakov stood in front of him, with his hands behind his back, and began to console him.
"There is nothing to worry about. No one knows when he is destined to die. One man will eat mushrooms, fall ill and die, while thousands of people can eat mushrooms and be all the better for them. Yet one will die. And what are mushrooms?"
Broad and strong, he stood like a rock in front of the merchant, and poured his words over him like bran. At first the merchant wept silently, wiping the tears from his beard with his broad palms, but when he had heard him out, he roared:
"What do you mean by torturing me like this? Fellow-Christians, take him away, or there will be murder!"
"How funny people are! You go to them out of kindness, and all they do is to abuse you!"
Sometimes I thought the stoker a fool, but more often I thought that he purposely pretended to be stupid. I asked him straight out about his youth and his wanderings around the world. The result was not what I meant it to be. Throwing his head back, almost closing his dark, copper-colored eyes, he stroked his mossy face with his hand and drawled:
"People everywhere, Brother,--everywhere,--are simple as ants! And where there are people, there is always trouble, I tell you! The greater number, of course, are peasants. The earth is absolutely strewn with _muzhiks_,--like autumn leaves, as we say. I have seen the Bulgars, and Greeks, too, and those--what do you call them?--Serbians; Rumanians also, and all kinds of Gipsies. Are there many different sorts? What sort of people? What do you mean by that? In the towns they are townspeople, and in the country--why, they are just like the country people among us. They resemble them in many ways. Some of them even speak our tongue, though badly, as, for instance, the Tatars and the Mordovans. The Greeks cannot speak our language. They chatter whatever comes into their heads, and it sounds like words; but what they say or about what it is impossible to understand. You have to talk on your fingers to them. But my old man managed to talk so that even the Greeks understood him. He muttered something, and they knew what he meant. An artful old man he was. He knew how to work upon them. Again you want to know what sort of people? You funny fellow! What should people be like? They were black, of course; and the Rumanians, too, were of the same faith. The Bulgars are also black, but they hold the same religion as ourselves. As for the Greeks, they are of the same race as the Turks."