A stout man, with an enormous paunch, tapped on the boards of the landing bridge with his cane, as he looked at the carriers with his small eyes and said: "Bawl less and work faster." His face and neck were covered with perspiration; he wiped it off every now and then with his left hand and breathed heavily, as though he were going uphill.
Foma cast at the man a hostile look and thought: "Others are working and he is sweating.

And I am still worse than he.
I'm like a crow on the fence, good for nothing." From each and every impression there immediately stood out in his mind the painful thought of his unfitness for life.

Everything that attracted his attention contained something offensive to him, and this something fell like a brick upon his breast.

At one side of him, by the freight scales, stood two sailors, and one of them, a square-built, red-faced fellow, was telling the other: "As they rushed on me it began for fair, my dear chap! There were four of them--I was alone! But I didn't give in to them, because I saw that they would beat me to death! Even a ram will kick out if you fleece it alive.

How I tore myself away from them! They all rolled away in different directions." "But you came in for a sound drubbing all the same ?" inquired the other sailor.
"Of course! I caught it.