Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter LIV Page 1
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind
shade. We had out pea-coats with us, and I took a bag. Of all my
worldly possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that
filled the bag. Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might
return, were questions utterly unknown to me; nor did I vex my mind
with them, for it was wholly set on Provis's safety. I only
wondered for the passing moment, as I stopped at the door and
looked back, under what altered circumstances I should next see
those rooms, if ever.
We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there,
as if we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of
course, I had taken care that the boat should be ready and
everything in order. After a little show of indecision, which there
were none to see but the two or three amphibious creatures
belonging to our Temple stairs, we went on board and cast off;
half-past eight.
Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine, and
being with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it
had turned, and row against it until dark. We should then be well
in those long reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex,
where the river is broad and solitary, where the water-side
inhabitants are very few, and lone public-houses are
scattered here and there, of which we could choose one for a
resting-place. There, we meant to lie by all night. The steamer
for Hamburg and the steamer for Rotterdam would start from London
at about nine on Thursday morning. We should know at what time to
expect them, according to where we were, and would hail the first;
so that, if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we should have
another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each vessel.
The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the
purpose was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realize the
condition in which I had been a few hours before. The crisp air,
the sunlight, the movement on the river, and the moving river
itself,--the road that ran with us, seeming to sympathize with us,
animate us, and encourage us on,--freshened me with new hope. I
felt mortified to be of so little use in the boat; but, there were
few better oarsmen than my two friends, and they rowed with a
At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far below its
present extent, and watermen's boats were far more numerous. Of
barges, sailing colliers, and coasting-traders, there were perhaps,
as many as now; but of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe
or a twentieth part so many. Early as it was, there were plenty of
scullers going here and there that morning, and plenty of barges
dropping down with the tide; the navigation of the river between
and wherries briskly.
Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate Market with
its oyster-boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and Traitor's
Gate, and we were in among the tiers of shipping. Here were the
Leith, Aberdeen, and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods,
here, were colliers by the score and score, with the coal-whippers
plunging off stages on deck, as counterweights to measures of coal
swinging up, which were then rattled over the side into barges;
here, at her moorings was to-morrow's steamer for Rotterdam, of
which we took good notice; and here to-morrow's for Hamburg, under
whose bowsprit we crossed. And now I, sitting in the stern, could
see, with a faster beating heart, Mill Pond Bank and Mill Pond
stairs.
"Is he there?" said Herbert.
"Not yet."
"Right! He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you see his
signal?"
"Not well from here; but I think I see it.--Now I see him! Pull
both. Easy, Herbert. Oars!"
We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on
board, and we were off again. He had a boat-cloak with him, and a
could have wished.
"Dear boy!" he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took his
chain-cables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing buoys, sinking for
the moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of
wood and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under
winds (as is done by many Johns), and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a
firm formality of bosom and knobby eyes starting two inches out
going at timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps
going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and
unintelligible sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at
respondent lightermen, in and out,--out at last upon the clearer
river, where the ships' boys might take their fenders in, no longer
fishing in troubled waters with them over the side, and where the
festooned sails might fly out to the wind.
At the Stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever since, I had
looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had seen
were not either attended or followed by any boat. If we had been
waited on by any boat, I should have run in to shore, and have
obliged her to go on, or to make her purpose evident. But we held
our own without any appearance of molestation.
He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural
part of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the wretched life
he had led accounted for it) that he was the least anxious of any
of us. He was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live
country; he was not disposed to be passive or resigned, as I
understood it; but he had no notion of meeting danger half way.
When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before he
troubled himself.
"If you knowed, dear boy," he said to me, "it is to sit here
alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been day by day
betwixt four walls, you'd envy me. But you don't know what it is."
"I think I know the delights of freedom," I answered.
"Ah," said he, shaking his head gravely. "But you don't know it
know it equal to me,--but I ain't a going to be low."
It occurred to me as inconsistent, that, for any mastering idea, he
should have endangered his freedom, and even his life. But I
reflected that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart
from all the habit of his existence to be to him what it would be
to another man. I was not far out, since he said, after smoking a
little:--
"You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t'other side the world,
I was always a looking to this side; and it come flat to be there,
for all I was a growing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch, and
Magwitch could come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody's head would
be troubled about him. They ain't so easy concerning me here, dear
boy,--wouldn't be, leastwise, they knowed where I was."
"If all goes well," said I, "you will be perfectly free and safe
again within a few hours."
"Well," he returned, drawing a long breath, "I hope so."
"And think so?"
He dipped his hand in the water over the boat's gunwale, and said,
smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me:--
"Ay, I s'pose I think so, dear boy. We'd be puzzled to be more
quiet and easy-going than we are at present. But--it's a flowing
it--I was a thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no
more see to the bottom of the next few hours than we can see to
the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can't
no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it's run through
my fingers and gone, you see!" holding up his dripping hand.
"But for your face I should think you were a little despondent,"
said I.
"Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet, and of
tune. Maybe I'm a growing a trifle old besides."
He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expression of
face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already out
of England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as if he
had been in constant terror; for, when we ran ashore to get some
bottles of beer into the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted
that I thought he would be safest where he was, and he said. "Do
you, dear boy?" and quietly sat down again.
The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the
sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to
lose none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly
and more of the nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and lower
between the muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us when we were
off Gravesend. As our charge was wrapped in his cloak, I purposely
passed within a boat or two's length of the floating Custom House,
and so out to catch the stream, alongside of two emigrant ships,
and under the bows of a large transport troops on the
forecastle looking down at us. And soon the tide began to slacken,
and the craft lying at anchor to swing, and presently they had all
swung round, and the ships that were taking advantage of the new
tide to get up to the Pool began to crowd upon us in a fleet, and
we kept under the shore, as much out of the strength of the tide
now as we could, standing carefully off from low shallows and
mudbanks.
Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let her
drive with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an
hour's rest proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore among
and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and
monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding river turned
and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and turned,
and everything else seemed stranded and still. For now the last
of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had headed;
and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown sail, had
followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's first
rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat
stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck
out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless building
slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud.
We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was much harder
work now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and rowed and rowed
and rowed until the sun went down. By that time the river had
lifted us a little, so that we could see above the bank. There was
the red sun, on the low level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast
deepening into black; and there was the solitary flat marsh; and
far away there were the rising grounds, between which and us there
seemed to be no life, save here and there in the foreground a
melancholy gull.
As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the
full, would not rise early, we held a little council; a short one,
for clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we
could find. So, they plied their oars once more, and I looked out
for anything like a house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for
four or five dull miles. It was very cold, and, a collier coming by
comfortable home. The night was as dark by this time as it would be
until morning; and what light we had, seemed to come more from the
river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few
reflected stars.
At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that
we were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at irregular
intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound came, one or
other of us was sure to start, and look in that direction. Here and
there, the set of the current had worn down the bank into a little
creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them
nervously. Sometimes, "What was ripple?" one of us would say
in a low voice. Or another, "Is that a boat yonder?" And
afterwards we would fall into a dead silence, and I would sit
impatiently thinking with what an unusual amount of noise the oars
At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently afterwards
ran alongside a little causeway made of stones had been picked
up hard by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and
found the light to be in a window of a public-house. It was a dirty
place enough, and I dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers;
but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and
bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink. Also, there were two
double-bedded rooms,--"such as they were," the landlord said. No
other company was in the house than the landlord, his wife, and a
grizzled male creature, the "Jack" of the little causeway, who was
as slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water mark too.
ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder and boat-hook, and
all else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very good meal