"Come, try them! In the autumn they're capital. And after all it is
much more pleasant to eat raven angled for by your own hands than bread
or fat given to you by the hand of a neighbour out of the window of his
house, which, after you have accepted it as an alms, you always want to
burn."
His remarks were reasonable--reasonable and interesting. The use of
raven as an article of food was new to me but did not cause me any
surprise I knew that in winter at Odessa "the lower orders" eat rats,
and at Rostov--slugs. There was nothing improbable in it Even the
Parisians, when in a state of siege, were glad to eat all sorts of
rubbish, and there are people who all their life long live in a state
of siege.
[1] Himself.
"And how do you catch your ravens?" my desire for information led me to
ask.
"Not with your mouth, anyhow. You can knock them down with a stick or
a stone, but the surest way is to fish for them! You must tie a piece
of fat meat or a bit of bread at the end of a long piece of cord. The
raven seizes it, gulps it down, and you haul him in. Then you twist his
neck, pluck him, draw him, and, fastening him on to a stick, roast him
over a fire."
"Ah! it would be nice to be sitting by a fire now," I sighed.
The cold had become more sensible. It seemed as if the very wind were
freezing, it beat against the walls of the magazine with such a painful
tremulous whine. Sometimes it was wafted to us along with the howl
of some dog, the crowing of a cock, and the melancholy sound of the
bell of the village church, hidden in the darkness. Drops of rain fell
heavily from the roof of the magazine on to the wet earth.
"'Tis dull to be silent," observed my fellow night-lodger.
"It's rather cold ... to talk," I said.
"Put your tongue in your pocket ... it will warm it up."
"Thanks for the hint!"
"We will go together, eh? When we take the road I mean...?"
"All right!"
"Let us introduce ourselves then ... I, for instance, am Pavel Ignat'ev
Promtov, Esq."