XIX.

Many years have passed since this happened, and I have often thought it over, and to this day I cannot comprehend the fury which possessed my father, who not long before had forbidden any one’s speaking about the watch because it bored him, any more than I can David’s wrath when he heard that Wassily had taken it.  I can’t help thinking it had some mysterious power.  Wassily had not told about us, as David supposed—­he did not want to do that, he had been too badly frightened—­but one of the servant-girls had seen the watch in his hands and had told my aunt.  Then all the fat was in the fire.

So we ran along the street in the carriage-way.  The people who met us stood 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