צו

Afterward we lit a fire and began to cook a chicken that was with us in honor of Shabbas Kodesh. Afterward — after some hours — the captain came and found us. And he received us pleasantly. And we went down with him to the cabin. And he came with another lord from another ship. And immediately the captain asked us: where are the others? I answered him about Rabbi Yehuda Eliezer: this is the man who came with me. He answered and said: are there not two more people obligated to come? And it happened as it happened — for the broker R.A. from Odessa — at the time he spoke with the captain to hire the ship for us — the captain asked him: how many people will there be? He answered: there will be four people. For he had thought that two more people from Odessa would travel. But they had not traveled. And afterward when the price was concluded with him — fifty rubles per person — it was not explicitly specified whether there would be four precisely or two. And I gave him the deposit. And when I returned home to my lodgings in Odessa — I began to think: perhaps the captain would insist that there be four? And I commanded to ask the broker about this. And the broker replied that there was no insistence about this at all. And afterward on the following Thursday — when I went back to the border and paid the captain all one hundred rubles and he gave me a receipt — this matter was also not discussed at all. And afterward I went back again and asked the broker myself: perhaps he would insist that there be four? And he laughed at me and said that the captain would not insist at all — for we had hired a place for one hundred rubles. Only the broker had spoken as brokers speak. And the captain spoke with us in some anger. And I had great suffering from this — for I was afraid he might make a false claim against me — Heaven forbid — for another hundred rubles — for his two men who had not come. For I thought in my mind he might claim that now he had no more grain to load into the cabin — since at that very hour the loading of the ship had been completed.