But Levin could not help remembering Kitty’s words as he parted from her: ‘See that you don’t shoot each other.’ The dogs came closer and closer, passing by each other, each following its own thread; the expectation was so intense that the sucking of his own boot as he pulled it out of the rusty water sounded to Levin like the call of a snipe, and he tightened his grip on the stock of his gun.
‘Bang! bang!’ rang out by his ear. It was Vasenka shooting at a flock of ducks that was circling above the swamp, far out of range, and just then came flying over the hunters. Levin had barely turned to look when a snipe creeched, then another, a third, and some eight more rose one after the other.
Stepan Arkadyich brought one down just as it was about to start zigzagging and the snipe fell like a lump into the mire. Oblonsky unhurriedly aimed at another that was still flying low towards the sedge, and that snipe dropped; it could be seen thrashing about in the mowed sedge, beating its unhurt wing, white underneath.
Levin was not so lucky: his first snipe was too close when he fired, and he missed; he aimed at it again as it flew up, but just then another flew out from under his feet and distracted him, and he missed a second time.
While they were reloading their guns another snipe rose, and Veslovsky, who had had time to reload, sent another two charges of small shot over the water. Stepan Arkadyich picked up his snipe and glanced at Levin with shining eyes.
‘Well, let’s split up now,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, and, limping slightly on his left leg and holding his gun ready, he whistled to his dog and went off in one direction. Levin and Veslovsky went in the other.
It always happened with Levin that when the first shots were unsuccessful, he would become angry, vexed, and shoot badly all day. That was happening now. There were a great many snipe. Snipe kept flying up from under the dog, from under the hunters’ feet, and Levin might have recovered; but the more shots he fired, the more he disgraced himself in front of Veslovsky, who merrily banged away, in and out of range, hit nothing and was not the least embarrassed by it. Levin rushed, could not control himself, became more and more feverish and finally reached the point of shooting almost without hope of hitting anything. Even Laska seemed to understand it. She began searching more lazily and glanced back at the hunters as if in perplexity or reproach. Shots came one after another. Powder smoke hung about the hunters, yet in the big, roomy net of the hunting bag there were only three small, light snipe. And of those one had been shot by Veslovsky and another by them both. Meanwhile, along the other side of the swamp, the infrequent but, as it seemed to Levin, significant shots of Stepan Arkadyich rang out, followed almost each time by: ‘Fetch, Krak, fetch!’
This upset Levin still more. Snipe kept circling in the air over the sedge. Creeching close to the ground and croaking higher up came ceaselessly from all sides; snipe flushed out earlier raced through the air and alighted just in front of the hunters. Not two but dozens of hawks, whimpering, circled over the marsh.
Having gone through the greater part of the marsh, Levin and Veslovsky reached a place where the muzhiks’ meadow was divided into long strips running down to the sedge, marked out here by trampled strips, there by thin rows of cut grass. Half of these strips had already been mowed.
Though there was little hope of finding as many in the unmowed grass as in the mowed, Levin had promised to meet Stepan Arkadyich and went further on down the mowed and unmowed strips with his companion.
‘Hey, hunters!’ one of the muzhiks, sitting by an unhitched cart, shouted to them. ‘Come and have a bite with us! Drink a glass!’
Levin turned.
‘Come on, it’s all right!’ a merry, bearded muzhik with a red face shouted, baring his white teeth and raising a glittering green bottle in the sun.
‘They’re inviting us to drink vodka. They’ve probably been dividing up the meadows. I’d go and have a drink,’ said Levin, hoping Veslovsky would be tempted by the vodka and go to them.
‘Why do they want to treat us?’
‘Just for fun. You really ought to join them. You’d be interested.’
‘Go on, go on, you’ll find the way to the mill!’ Levin shouted and, looking back, was pleased to see Veslovsky, hunched over, his weary legs stumbling, his gun in his outstretched hand, making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.
‘You come, too!’ the muzhik cried to Levin. ‘Why not? Have a bit of pie! Eh!’
