Kolya lies between the rails as a train passes in a reckless nighttime dare that makes a spectacle of his courage, nearly costs him his life, and leaves a lasting mark on his relationship with his mother. The episode begins as a wager among older boys, but its aftermath converts a performance meant to win standing among them into a promise of restraint made to the person whose fear he had not reckoned with.

The wager and its stakes

During his stay at the station, Kolya played with six or seven boys, most of them between twelve and fifteen. On the fourth or fifth day, the group made a foolish bet. Kolya was almost the youngest and felt looked down upon as a result; vanity or reckless bravado moved him to wager two roubles that he would lie between the railway rails at night as the eleven o’clock train approached, and remain there while it passed at full speed.

The dare answered an insult to his standing: the others had treated him as a small boy, unfit to associate with them. To prove otherwise, he accepted a danger that the group could not safely control. The boys chose a point half a mile from the station, allowing the train time to gather speed, and arranged to meet in the evening. Recognition among his companions was the prize; a moving train made the cost of failure immediate and irreversible.

The train passes

The night was pitch-dark and moonless. At the appointed time Kolya lay down between the rails while the five boys who had taken the bet waited among bushes below the embankment. Their suspense gave way to alarm and remorse when they heard the train rumbling away from the station. Two red lights appeared in the darkness, and the train roared toward them.

The boys shouted for Kolya to run, but there was no time. The train flew past. They rushed to him and found him lying motionless, pulling and lifting him in alarm. Then he got up and walked away without a word. His first appearance afterward suggested that he had simply endured the ordeal: he later explained that he had pretended to be insensible in order to frighten the others. But he also confessed, long afterward to his mother, that he really had lost consciousness. The apparent mastery of fear was therefore partly a pose, and the most dangerous moment of the wager was one Kolya himself could not consciously command.

Reputation and consequences

The incident established Kolya’s reputation as a desperate character. The boys’ immediate terror, followed by his silent recovery, supplied the story with its striking image; his later explanation complicated it. He had wanted to demonstrate courage, yet the episode did not prove that he had remained fully conscious or unafraid. The distinction between daring and control became visible only after the train had passed.

Kolya returned to the station white as a sheet. The next day he suffered a slight attack of nervous fever, though he was in high spirits and pleased with himself. The physical aftermath thus accompanied, rather than immediately erased, the pride he took in what he had done. The boys’ astonishment gave him the standing he had sought, while the incident exposed how little that triumph guaranteed his safety.

His mother’s fear and Kolya’s promise

News of the exploit nearly drove Anna Fyodorovna, known as Madame Krassotkin, out of her mind with horror. Her hysterical attacks lasted several days, with intervals between them. What had begun as a challenge among boys now had a consequence Kolya could not treat as another test of reputation: his mother’s terror made the danger personal and persistent.

Seriously alarmed at last, Kolya promised on his honour that he would never repeat such pranks. At his mother’s insistence, he swore before the holy image and by the memory of his father. The “manly” Kolya then burst into tears like a six-year-old. That reversal reveals the strain behind his posture of independence: he could risk his life to resist being dismissed as a child, yet his mother’s distress drew out the child she feared she might lose. The railway dare ends not simply in survival and notoriety, but in a vow that changes his attitude toward her.