"Anatoly Rybakov. The dirk (Кортик, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

dogs barked incessantly in the vegetable gardens.
Polevoy pulled at a pipe of home-grown tobacco and spoke if voyages to
distant lands, of mutinies on the high seas, of cruisers and submarines, of
Ivan Poddubny and other famous wrestlers in black red, and green masks, of
strong men lifting three horses together with the carts, each cart
containing ten persons.
Misha gaped in wonder. Orange lights blinked timidly from the dark rows
of little wooden houses huddling close on the silent street Polevoy also
spoke of the Empress Maria on which he had served during the world war.

The Empress Maria was a huge ship, the most powerful battleship in the
Black Sea Fleet. She was launched in June 1915 and blew up near Sevastopol
in October 1916, half a mile off the coast.
"A black business that was," Polevoy said. "She was not struck by a
mine or a torpedo, but blew up on her own. The magazine of the first turret,
that had about forty-eight tons of powder in it, was the first to explode.
That set everything off. In an hour the ship was already under water; the
survivors, less than half the crew, were all either badly burned or
injured."
"Who blew her up, then?" Misha asked.
Polevoy shrugged his broad shoulders.
"Many people tried to get to the bottom of it," he said, "but all to no
purpose; and then came the Revolution. You have to ask the tsarist admirals
for an explanation."
"Sergei Ivanovich," Misha asked suddenly, "who's greater, a tsar or a
king?"
"Hm!. . ." Polevoi spat out the brown tobacco juice. "One's as good as
the other."
"And are there still tsars in other countries?"
"Yes, here and there."
"Should I ask him about the dirk?" Misha thought. "No, better not. He
might think I had followed him on purpose."
A little later everyone went back into the house. Grandmother made her
usual evening rounds, closing the shutters. The iron bolts clanged
warningly. The kerosene lamp hanging in the dining-room was put out, and the
moths and midges that had swarmed around it melted into the darkness.
Misha lay awake in bed a long time.
The moon sent its pale threads through the chinks in the shutters, and
a cricket began chirping behind the stove in the kitchen.
They had no crickets in Moscow. What would a cricket be doing in a big,
noisy apartment, where people walked in and out at night, banging the doors
and clicking the electric switches! That was why he heard a cricket only in
Grandfather's quiet house when he lay alone with his dreams in the dark
room.
What a splendid thing it would be if Polevoy gave him the dirk. He
would not be unarmed as now. And the times were alarming, with the Civil War
going on. Bandits were running loose in the Ukrainian villages, and even the
towns were not safe. Detachments of the local self-defence corps patrolled
the streets at night, armed with old rifles with rusty bolts and no bullets.
Misha dreamed of the future when he would be tall and strong, when he