Chapter 20

The next day Olenin went alone to the spot where he and the old
man startled the stag. Instead of passing round through the gate
he climbed over the prickly hedge, as everybody else did, and
before he had had time to pull out the thorns that had caught in
his coat, his dog, which had run on in front, started two
pheasants. He had hardly stepped among the briers when the
pheasants began to rise at every step (the old man had not shown
him that place the day before as he meant to keep it for shooting
from behind the screen). Olenin fired twelve times and killed five
pheasants, but clambering after them through the briers he got so
fatigued that he was drenched with perspiration. He called off his
dog, uncocked his gun, put in a bullet above the small shot, and
brushing away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of his
Circassian coat he went slowly to the spot where they had been the
day before. It was however impossible to keep back the dog, who
found trails on the very path, and Olenin killed two more
pheasants, so that after being detained by this it was getting
towards noon before he began to find the place he was looking for.

The day was perfectly clear, calm, and hot. The morning moisture
had dried up even in the forest, and myriads of mosquitoes
literally covered his face, his back, and his arms. His dog had
turned from black to grey, its back being covered with mosquitoes,
and so had Olenin's coat through which the insects thrust their
stings. Olenin was ready to run away from them and it seemed to
him that it was impossible to live in this country in the summer.
He was about to go home, but remembering that other people managed
to endure such pain he resolved to bear it and gave himself up to
be devoured. And strange to say, by noontime the feeling became
actually pleasant. He even felt that without this mosquito-filled
atmosphere around him, and that mosquito-paste mingled with
perspiration which his hand smeared over his face, and that
unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for
him some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were
so well suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these
multitudes of birds and beasts which filled the forest, this dark
foliage, this hot scented air, these runlets filled with turbid
water which everywhere soaked through from the Terek and gurgled
here and there under the overhanging leaves, that the very thing
which had at first seemed to him dreadful and intolerable now
seemed pleasant. After going round the place where yesterday they
had found the animal and not finding anything, he felt inclined to
rest. The sun stood right above the forest and poured its
perpendicular rays down on his back and head whenever