fish?"

"Can, for that matter, a fish speak?" was Ossip's
good-humoured retort.

All of which inspired Mokei Budirin, a grey-headed muzhik of a
cast of countenance canine in the prominence of his jaws and the
recession of his forehead, and taciturn withal, though not
otherwise remarkable, to give slow, nasal utterance to his
favourite formula.

"That is true enough," he said.

For never could anything be spoken of that was grim or
marvellous or lewd or malicious, but Budirin at once re-echoed
softly, but in a tone of unshakable conviction: "That is true
enough."

Thereafter he would tap me on the breast with his hard and
ponderous fist.

Presently work again underwent an interruption through the fact
that Yakov Boev, a man who possessed both a stammer and a
squint, became similarly filled with a desire to tell us
something about a fish. Yet from the moment that he began his
narrative everyone declined to believe it, and laughed at his
broken verbiage as, frequently invoking the Deity, and cursing,
and brandishing his awl, and viciously swallowing spittle, he
shouted amid general ridicule: