Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter LIV Page 2
by the kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms: Herbert and
Startop were to occupy one; I and our charge the other. We found
the air as carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to
life; and there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the
beds than I should have thought the family possessed. But we
considered ourselves well off, notwithstanding, for a more solitary
place we could not have found.
While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, the
Jack--who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair of
shoes on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs and
the feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore--asked me if we had
seen a four-oared galley going up with the tide? When I told him
No, he said she must have gone down then, and yet she "took up
too," when she left there.
"They must ha' thought better on't for some reason or another,"
said the Jack, "and gone down."
"A four-oared galley, did you say?" said I.
"A four," said the Jack, "and two sitters."
"Did they come ashore here?"
"They put in with a stone two-gallon jar for some beer. I'd
ha' been glad to pison the beer myself," said the Jack, "or put some
rattling physic in it."
"Why?"
"I know why," said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, as much
mud had washed into his throat.
"He thinks," said the landlord, a weakly meditative man a pale
what they wasn't."
"I knows what I thinks," observed the Jack.
"You thinks Custum 'Us, Jack?" said the landlord.
"I do," said the Jack.
"Then you're wrong, Jack."
"AM I!"
In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence
in his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked
into it, knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and
put it on again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so
right that he could afford to do anything.
"Why, what do you make out that they done with their buttons then,
Jack?" asked the landlord, vacillating weakly.
"Done with their buttons?" returned the Jack. "Chucked 'em
overboard. Swallered 'em. Sowed 'em, to come up small salad. Done
with their buttons!"
"Don't be cheeky, Jack," remonstrated the landlord, in a melancholy
and pathetic way.
"A Custum 'Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons," said the
Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt,
"when they comes betwixt him and his own light. A four and two
sitters don't go hanging and hovering, up with one tide and down
with another, and both with and against another, without there
being Custum 'Us at the bottom of it." Saying which he went out in
disdain; and the landlord, having no one to reply upon, found it
impracticable to pursue the subject.
This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. The dismal
wind was muttering round the house, the tide was flapping at the
shore, and I had a feeling that we were caged and threatened. A
four-oared galley hovering about in so unusual a way as to attract
this notice was an ugly circumstance that I could not get rid of.
I had induced Provis to go up to bed, I went outside with my
two companions (Startop by this time knew the state of the case),
and held another council. Whether we should remain at the house
until near the steamer's time, which would be about one in the
afternoon, or whetwe should put off early in the morning, was
course to lie where we were, until within an hour or so of the
steamer's time, and then to get out in her track, and drift easily
with the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned into the
house and went to bed.
I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well
the house (the Ship) was creaking and banging about, with noises
that startled me. Rising softly, for my charge lay fast asleep, I
looked out of the window. It commanded the causeway where we had
hauled up our boat, and, as my eyes adapted themselves to the light
of the clouded moon, I saw two men looking into her. They passed by
under the window, looking at nothing else, and they did not go down
to the landing-place which I could discern to be empty, but struck
across the marsh in the direction of the Nore.
My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two men
going away. But reflecting, before I got into his room, which was
at the back of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Startop had
to my window, I could see the two men moving over the marsh. In
that light, however, I soon lost them, and, feeling very cold, lay
down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again.
We were up early. As we walked to and fro, all four together,
before breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen.
Again our charge was the least anxious of the party. It was very
likely that the men belonged to the Custom House, he said quietly,
and that they had no thought of us. I tried to persuade myself that
it was so,--as, indeed, it might easily be. However, I proposed
see, and that the boat should take us aboard there, or as near
there as might prove feasible, at about noon. This being considered
a good precaution, soon after breakfast he and I set forth, without
saying anything at the tavern.
He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap
me on the shoulder. One would have supposed that it was I who was
in danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me. We spoke very
little. As we approached the point, I begged him to remain in a
sheltered place, while I went on to reconnoitre; for it was
towards it that the men had passed in the night. He complied, and I
up anywhere near it, nor were there any signs of the men having
embarked there. But, to be sure, the tide was high, and there might
have been some footpints under water.
When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, and saw that I
waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and we
waited; sometimes lying on the bank, wrapped in our coats, and
sometimes moving about to warm ourselves, until we saw our boat
coming round. We got aboard easily, and rowed out into the track of
the steamer. By that time it wanted but ten minutes of one o'clock,
and we began to look out for her smoke.
But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and soon
afterwards we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they
were coming on at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took
all shaken hands cordially, and neither Herbert's eyes nor mine
the bank but a little way ahead of us, and row out into the same
track.
A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer's
smoke, by reason of the bend and wind of the river; but now she was
visible, coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop to keep
before the tide, that she might see us lying by for her, and I
adjured Provis to sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He
answered cheerily, "Trust to me, dear boy," and sat like a statue.
us, let us come up with her, and fallen alongside. Leaving just
room enough for the play of the oars, she kept alongside, drifting
when we drifted, and pulling a stroke or two when we pulled. Of the
two sitters one held the rudder-lines, and looked at us attentively,
--as did all the rowers; the other sitter was wrapped up, much as
Provis was, and seemed to shrink, and whisper some instruction to
the steerer as he looked at us. Not a word was spoken in either
boat.
Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which steamer was
first, and gave me the word "Hamburg," in a low voice, as we sat
face to face. She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her
peddles grew louder and louder. I felt as if her shadow were
absolutely upon us, when the galley hailed us. I answered.
"You have a returned Transport there," said the man who held the
lines. "That's the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel
Magwitch, otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call upon him
to surrender, and you to assist."
At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his
crew, he ran the galley abroad of us. They had pulled one sudden
stroke ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were
holding on to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing.
This caused great confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them
calling to us, and heard the order given to stop the paddles, and
heard them stop, but felt her driving down upon us irresistibly. In
his prisoner's shoulder, and saw that both boats were swinging
round with the force of the tide, and saw that all hands on board
the steamer were running forward quite frantically. Still, in the
same moment, I saw the prisoner start up, lean across his captor,
and pull the cloak from the neck of the shrinking sitter in the
galley. Still in the same moment, I saw that the face disclosed,
was the face of the other convict of long ago. Still, in the same
I shall never forget, and heard a great cry on board the steamer,
and a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat sink from under
me.
It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a thousand
was taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and Startop was
there; but our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone.
What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious blowing off
of her steam, and her driving on, and our driving on, I could not
at first distinguish sky from water or shore from shore; but the
crew of the galley righted her with great speed, and, pulling
certain swift strong strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man
looking silently and eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark
object was seen in it, bearing towards us on the tide. No man
spoke, but the steersman held up his hand, and all softly backed
nearer, I saw it to be Magwitch, swimming, but not swimming freely.
He was taken on board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and
ankles.
The galley was kept steady, and the silent, eager look-out at the
water was resumed. But, the Rotterdam steamer now came up, and
apparently not understanding what had happened, came on at speed.
By the time she had been hailed and stopped, both steamers were
drifting away from us, and we were rising and falling in a troubled
wake of water. The look-out was kept, long after all was still
again and the two steamers were gone; but everybody knew that it
was hopeless now.
At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore towards the
tavern we had lately left, where we were received with no little
surprise. Here I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch,--
Chest, and a deep cut in the head.
He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel of
the steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The
injury to his chest (which rendered his breathing extremely
painful) he thought he had received against the side of the galley.
He added that he did not pretend to say he might or might not
hand on his cloak to identify him, that villain had staggered up
and staggered back, and they had both gone overboard together, when
the sudden wrenching of him (Magwitch) out of our boat, and the
me in a whisper that they had gone down fiercely locked in each
other's arms, and that there had been a struggle under water, and
that he had disengaged himself, struck out, and swum away.
I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he thus
told me. The officer who steered the galley gave the same account
of their going overboard.
When I asked this officer's permission to change the prisoner's wet
clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could get at the
public-house, he gave it readily: merely observing that he must
take charge of everything his prisoner had about him. So the
pocket-book which had once been in my hands passed into the
officer's. He further gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to
London; but declined to accord that grace to my two friends.
The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned man had gone
down, and undertook to search for the body in the places where it
was likeliest to come ashore. His interest in its recovery seemed
to me to be much heightened when he heard that it had stockings on.
Probably, it took about a dozen drowned men to fit him out
completely; and that may have been the reason why the different
articles of his dress were in various stages of decay.
Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board. Herbert
and Startop were to get to London by land, as soon as they could.
We had a doleful parting, and when I took my place by Magwitch's
side, I felt that that was my place henceforth while he lived.
For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away; and in the
Hunted, wounded, shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only
saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt
affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me great
constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much
better man than I had been to Joe.
His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night drew
on, and often he could not repress a groan. I tried to rest him on
the arm I could use, in any easy position; but it was dreadful to
think that I could not be sorry at heart for his being badly hurt,
since it was unquestionably best that he should die. That there
were, still living, people enough who were able and willing to
treated, I could not hope. He who had been presented in the worst
light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried
again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence,
and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of
his arrest.
As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left behind
us, and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back, I told
him how grieved I was to think that he had come home for my sake.
seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me."
No. I had thought about that, while we had been there side by side.
No. Apart from any inclinations of my own, I understood Wemmick's
hint now. I foresaw that, being convicted, his possessions would be
forfeited to the Crown.
"Lookee here, dear boy," said he "It's best as a gentleman should
not be knowed to belong to me now. Only come to see me as if you
come by chance alonger Wemmick. Sit where I can see you when I am
swore to, for the last o' many times, and I don't ask no more."
"I will never stir from your side," said I, "when I am suffered to
to me!"
I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face
away as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old
sound in his throat,--softened now, like all the rest of him. It
was a good thing that he had touched this point, for it put into my
mind what I might not otherwise have thought of until too late,--
that he need never know how his hopes of enriching me had perished.