The steward, stout and bloated, was as bald as a billiard-ball. He walked heavily up and down the deck all day long with his hands clasped behind his back, like a boar looking for a shady corner on a sultry day. His wife flaunted herself in the buffet. She was a woman of about forty, handsome, but faded, and so thickly powdered that her colored dress was covered with the white, sticky dust that fell from her cheeks. The kitchen was ruled over by an expensive cook, Ivan Ivanovich, whose surname was Medvyejenok. He was a small, stout man, with an aquiline nose and mocking eyes. He was a coxcomb, wore starched collars, and shaved every day. His cheeks were dark blue, and his dark mustaches curled upward. He spent all his spare moments in the arrangement of these mustaches, pulling at them with fingers stained by his work at the stove, and looking at them in a small handglass. The most interesting person on the boat was the stoker, Yaakov Shumov, a broad-chested, square man. His snub-nosed face was as smooth as a spade; his coffee-colored eyes were hidden under thick eyebrows; his cheeks were covered with small, bristling hairs, like the moss which is found in marshes; and the same sort of hair, through which he could hardly pass his crooked fingers, formed a close-fitting cap for his head. He was skilful in games of cards for money, and his greed was amazing. He was always hanging about the kitchen like a hungry dog, asking for pieces of meat and bones. In the evenings he used to take his tea with Medvyejenok and relate amazing stories about himself. In his youth he had been assistant to the town shepherd of Riazin. Then a passing monk lured him into a monastery, where he served for four years. "And I should have become a monk, a black star of God," he said in his quick, comical way, "if a pilgrim had not come to our cloister from Penza. She was very entertaining, and she upset me. 'Eh, you 're a fine strong fellow,' says she, 'and I am a respectable widow and lonely. You shall come to me,' she says. 'I have my own house, and I deal in eider-down and feathers.' That suited me, and I went to her. I became her lover, and lived with her as comfortably as warm bread in a oven, for three years." "You lie hardily," Medvyejenok interrupted him, anxiously examining a pimple on his nose. "If lies could make money, you would be worth thousands." Yaakov hummed. The blue, bristling hairs moved on his impassive face, and his shaggy mustaches quivered. After he had heard the cook's remark he continued as calmly and quickly as before: "She was older than I, and she began to bore me. Then I must go and take up with her niece, and she found it out, and turned me out by the scruff of the neck." "And served you right, you did not deserve anything better," said the cook as easily and smoothly as Yaakov himself. The stoker went on, with a lump of sugar in his cheek: