When the stoker spoke like this, it was quite clear to me that he knew something more than I could grasp. "What do you think of the cook?" I asked him. "Of Medvyejenok?" said Yaakov, calmly. "What do I think of him? There is nothing to think about him at all." That was true. Ivan Ivanovich was so strictly correct and smooth that one's thoughts could get no grip on him. There was only one interesting thing about him: he loved the stoker, was always scolding him, and yet always invited him to tea. One day he said to him: "If you had been my serf and I had been your master, I would have flogged you seven times each week, you sluggard!" Yaakov replied in a serious tone: "Seven times? That's rather a lot!" Although he abused the stoker, the cook for some reason or other fed him with all kinds of things. He would throw a morsel to him roughly and say: "There. Gobble it up!" Yaakov would devour it without any haste, saying: "I am accumulating a reserve of strength through you, Ivan Ivanovich." "And what is the use of strength to you, lazy-bones?" "What is the use? Why, I shall live all the longer for it." "Why should you live, useless one?" "But useless people go on living. Besides, you know, it is very amusing to be alive, is n't it? Living, Ivan Ivanovich, is a very comforting business." "What an idiot!" "Why do you say that?" "I-di-ot!" "There's a way of speaking!" said Yaakov in amazement, and Medvyejenok said to me: "Just think of it! We dry up our blood and roast the marrow out of our bones in that infernal heat at the stoves while he guzzles like a boar!" "Every one must work out his own fate," said the stoker, masticating. I knew that to stoke the furnaces was heavier and hotter work than to stand at the stove, for I had tried several times at night to stoke with Yaakov, and it seemed strange to me that he did not enlighten the cook with regard to the heaviness of his labors. Yes, this man certainly had a peculiar knowledge of his own. They all scolded him,--the captain, the engineer, the first mate, all of those who must have known he was not lazy. I thought it very strange. Why did they not appraise him rightly? The stokers behaved considerably better to him than the rest although they made fun of his incessant chatter and his love of cards. I asked them: "What do you think of Yaakov? Is he a good man?" "Yaakov? He's all right. You can't upset him whatever you do, even if you were to put hot coals in his chest." What with his heavy labor at the boilers, and his appetite of a horse, the stoker slept but little. Often, when the watches were changed, without changing his clothes, sweating and dirty, he stayed the whole night on deck, talking with the passengers, and playing cards. In my eyes he was like a locked trunk in which something was hidden which I simply must have, and I obstinately sought the key by which I might open it.