he bellowed in a voice of thunder; 'but stop a bit! don't you know, dry words scorch the mouth? Come this way! It's much handier talking here.' He dragged Nezhdanov into the tavern; the rest of the crowd trooped in after them. 'Miheitch!' bawled the young giant, 'look sharp! two penn'orth! My favourite tap! I'm treating a friend! Who he is, what's his family, and where he's from, old Nick knows, but he's laying into the gentry pretty hot. Drink!' he said turning to Nezhdanov, and handing him a full heavy glass, moist all over the outside as though perspiring, 'drink—if you've really any feeling for the likes of us!' 'Drink!' rose a noisy chorus around. Nezhdanov grasped the pot (he was in a sort of nightmare), shouted, 'To your health, lads!' and emptied it at a gulp. Ugh! He drank it off with the same desperate heroism with which he would have flung himself on a storm of battery or a row of bayonets.. . . But what was happening in him? Something seemed to dart along his spine and down his legs, to set his throat, his chest, and his stomach on fire, to drive the tears into his eyes. . . . A shudder of nausea passed all over him, and with difficulty he kept it down. . . . He shouted at the top of his voice, if only to drown the throbbing in his head. The dark tavern room seemed suddenly
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