“I’ll give it to you! The beasts are in the garden and he is fishing! … When will that bathing shed be done, you devils? You’ve been at work two days, and what is there to show for it?”

“It … will soon be done,” grunts Gerassim; “summer is long, you’ll have plenty of time to wash, your honour. … Pfrrr! … We can’t manage this eel-pout here anyhow. … He’s got under a root and sits there as if he were in a hole and won’t budge one way or another. …”

“An eel-pout?” says the master, and his eyes begin to glisten. “Get him out quickly then.”

“You’ll give us half a rouble for it presently … if we oblige you. … A huge eel-pout, as fat as a merchant’s wife. … It’s worth half a rouble, your honour, for the trouble. … Don’t squeeze him, Lubim, don’t squeeze him, you’ll spoil him! Push him up from below! Pull the root upwards, my good man … what’s your name? Upwards, not downwards, you brute! Don’t swing your legs!”

Five minutes pass, ten. … The master loses all patience.

“Vassily!” he shouts, turning towards the garden. “Vaska! Call Vassily to me!”

The coachman Vassily runs up. He is chewing something and breathing hard.

“Go into the water,” the master orders him. “Help them to pull out that eel-pout. They can’t get him out.”

Vassily rapidly undresses and gets into the water.

“In a minute. … I’ll get him in a minute,” he mutters. “Where’s the eel-pout? We’ll have him out in a trice! You’d better go, Yefim. An old man like you ought to be minding his own business instead of being here. Where’s that eel-pout? I’ll have him in a minute. … Here he is! Let go.”

“What’s the good of saying that? We know all about that! You get it out!”

“But there is no getting it out like this! One must get hold of it by the head.”

“And the head is under the root! We know that, you fool!”

“Now then, don’t talk or you’ll catch it! You dirty cur!”

“Before the master to use such language,” mutters Yefim. “You won’t get him out, lads! He’s fixed himself much too cleverly!”

“Wait a minute, I’ll come directly,” says the master, and he begins hurriedly undressing. “Four fools, and can’t get an eel-pout!”

When he is undressed, Audrey Andreitch gives himself time to cool and gets into the water. But even his interference leads to nothing.

“We must chop the root off,” Lubim decides at last. “Gerassim, go and get an axe! Give me an axe!”

“Don’t chop your fingers off,” says the master, when the blows of the axe on the root under water are heard. “Yefim, get out of this! Stay, I’ll get the eel-pout. … You’ll never do it.”

The root is hacked a little. They partly break it off, and Andrey Andreitch, to his immense satisfaction, feels his fingers under the gills of the fish.

“I’m pulling him out, lads! Don’t crowd round … stand still. … I am pulling him out!”

The head of a big eel-pout, and behind it its long black body, nearly a yard long, appears on the surface of the water. The fish flaps its tail heavily and tries to tear itself away.