Short Fiction, Vsevolod Garshin [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

of presence of mind, which she possessed. In the evening the whole company halted in a swamp. At dawn the ducks with the frog continued their journey, but this time their passenger, in order to see the better what was happening, fastened on with her back and head to the front. The ducks flew over mown fields, woods turning yellow, and over villages full of corn-stacks. They could hear the people talking, and the noise of the machines with which they were threshing the rye. The villagers looked at the ducks, and, noticing something strange in their midst, pointed to it. And the frog longed to fly lower down, so as to show herself and to hear what they were saying about her. At the next halt she said:

“Is it possible for us to fiy not quite so high? It makes my head swim, and I am afraid of falling if I should suddenly feel bad.”

The kind ducks promised her to fly lower, and the following day they travelled so low that they could hear what was said.

“Look, look!” cried the children in one of the villages; “the ducks are carrying a frog!”

The frog heard this, and her heart jumped. “Look, look!” “grownups” cried in another village. “That’s an extraordinary thing!”

“Do they know that it was I who thought of this, and not the ducks?” the frog wondered to herself.

“Look, look!” they cried in a third village. “What a wonder! And who thought of such a clever dodge?” Thereupon the frog could stand it no longer, and, throwing caution to the winds, cried out at the top of her voice:

“It was I⁠—I!”

And with this cry she went tumbling over and over to the ground. The ducks quacked loudly, and one of them tried to catch hold of their unfortunate fellow-traveller as she was falling, but missed her. The frog, frantically waving all four paws, quickly fell to the ground, but as the ducks were flying very fast, she did not fall just at the spot above which she had cried out, and where there was a hard road, but much farther on, which was extremely lucky for her, because she flopped into a muddy pond on the edge of the village.

She quickly appeared from out of the water, and with all her might began to cry out:

“It was I⁠—it was I who thought of it!”

But there was no one near her. The local frogs, frightened by the unexpected splash, had all disappeared under water. When they began to reappear they gazed at the new arrival with astonishment.

And she related to them a wonderful story of how she had thought all her life about the matter, and had at last invented a new, unusual method of travelling by ducks. How she had her own special ducks which carried her where she wanted to go. How she had been in the beautiful South, where it was so nice, where there are such lovely warm swamps, and such quantities of midges, and every other kind of edible insects.

“I have come here to see how you live,” she said. “I shall stay with you until the spring, until my ducks, which I have let go, return.”

But the ducks never returned. They thought that the frog had been smashed to pieces by her fall, and were very sorry for her.

The Signal

Simon Ivanoff was a linesman on the railway. From his hut it was twenty versts to the nearest station on one side, and ten versts on the other. Last year, about four versts away, a spinning-mill had opened, and its tall chimney stood out darkly against the forest, but except for the huts of other linesmen there was no living soul nearer him.

Simon Ivanoff’s health had broken down generally. Nine years ago he had been at the war and had acted as servant to an officer, with whom he served right through the campaign. He had starved, been roasted by the sun, had frozen, and had made marches of forty and fifty versts in the heat and frost. He had been under fire, but, thank God! no bullet had touched him. Once his regiment had been in the first line. For a whole week there had been skirmishes with the Turks; the Russian and Turkish firing-lines had been separated only by a deep strath, and from morn till eve they kept up a continuous crossfire. Simon’s officer had also been in the firing-line, and three times a day Simon took him a steaming samovar and his dinner from the regimental kitchen in the ravine. As he went with the samovar along the open, bullets hummed about him, and snapped viciously against the stones in a manner terrifying to Simon, who used to cry, but still kept on. The officers were very pleased with him, because there was always hot tea for them. He returned from the campaign whole, but with rheumatism in his hands and feet. He had experienced no little sorrow since then. He arrived home to find his father, an old man, had died; his little four-year-old son also dead (his throat), so there only remained Simon and his wife. They could not do much. It was difficult to plough with swollen hands and feet. They could no longer stay in their own village, and they started off to seek fortune in new places. Simon and his wife stayed for a short time on the line, in Cherson and in Donschina, but nowhere found luck. Then the wife went out to service, and Simon, as formerly, travelled about. Once he happened to travel on an engine, and at one of the stations he saw the stationmaster, whose face seemed familiar to him. Simon looked at the stationmaster and the stationmaster at Simon, and they recognized each other. He had been an officer of Simon’s regiment.

“You are Ivanoff?” he said.

“Exactly, Your Excellency; that’s me.”

“How have you got here?”

Simon told him all.

“Where are you off to?”

“I cannot tell you, sir.”

“You