Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter V Page 2
dragged him this far on his way back. He's a gentleman, if you
please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again,
through me. Murder him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I
could do worse and drag him back!"
The other one still gasped, "He tried--he tried-to--murder me.
Bear--bear witness."
"Lookee here!" said my convict to the sergeant. "Single-handed I
got clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could
ha' got clear of these death-cold flats likewise --look at my leg:
you won't find much iron on it--if I hadn't made the discovery that
he was here. Let him go free? Let him profit by the means as I found
out? Let him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no,
The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his
companion, repeated, "He tried to murder me. I should have been a
dead man if you had not come up."
"He lies!" said my convict, with fierce energy. "He's a liar born,
and he'll die a liar. Look at his face; ain't it written there? Let
him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it."
The other, with an effort at a scornful smile, which could not,
however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set
expression, looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the
marshes and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.
"Do you see him?" pursued my convict. "Do you see what a villain he
is? Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That's how he
looked when we were tried together. He never looked at me."
The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his
eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a
moment on the speaker, with the words, "You are not much to look
point, my convict became so frantically exasperated, he would
have rushed upon him but for the interposition of the soldiers.
"Didn't I tell you," said the other convict then, "that he would
murder me, if he could?" And any one could see that he shook with
fear, and that there broke out upon his lips curious white flakes,
like thin snow.
"Enough of this parley," said the sergeant. "Light those torches."
As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went
down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the
first time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's back on the brink
him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and
shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me I might
try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed to
me he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look
that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if he
had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have
remembered his face ever afterwards, as having been more attentive.
The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three or
four torches, and took one himself and distributed the others. It
had been almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and soon
afterwards very dark. Before we departed from that spot, four
soldiers standing in a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently we
saw ottorches kindled at some distance behind us, and others on
the marshes on the opposite bank of the river. "All right," said
the sergeant. "March."
We had not far when three cannon were fired ahead of us with a
sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear. "You are
expected on board," said the sergeant to my convict; "they know you
are coming. Don't straggle, my man. Close up here."
The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a separate
guard. I had hold of Joe's hand now, and Joe carried one of the
see it out, so we went on with the party. There was a reasonably
good path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with a divergence
here and there where a dike came, with a miniature windmill on it
and a muddy sluice-gate. When I looked round, I could see the other
lights coming in after us. The torches we carried dropped great
blotches of fire upon the track, and I could see those, too, lying
smoking and flaring. I could see nothing else but black darkness.
Our lights warmed the air about us with their pitchy blaze, and the
two prisoners seemed rather to like that, as they limped along in
the midst of the muskets. We could not go fast, because of their
lameness; and they were so spent, that two or three times we had to
halt while they rested.
After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden
hut and a landing-place. There was a guard in the hut, and they
was a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright
wooden bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without the machinery,
four soldiers who lay upon it in their great-coats were not much
interested in us, but just lifted their heads and took a sleepy
stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant made some kind of
the other convict was drafted off with his guard, to go on board
first.
My convict never looked at me, except that once. While we stood in
the hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or
putting up his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thoughtfully
at them as if he pitied them for their recent adventures. Suddenly,
he turned to the sergeant, and remarked,--
"I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may prevent
some persons laying under suspicion alonger me."
"You can say what you like," returned the sergeant, standing coolly
it here. You'll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear
about it, before it's done with, you know."
"I know, but this is anotpint, a separate matter. A man can't
starve; at least I can't. I took some wittles, up at the willage
over yonder,--where the church stands a'most out on the marshes."
"You mean stole," said the sergeant.
"And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's."
"Halloa!" said the sergeant, staring at Joe.
"It was some broken wittles--that's what it was--and a dram of
liquor, and a pie."
asked the sergeant, confidentially.
"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know,
Pip?"
"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner,
and without the least glance at me,--"so you're the blacksmith, are
you? Than I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."
"God knows you're welcome to it,--so far as it was ever mine,"
returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. "We don't know
what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for
it, poor miserable fellow-creatur.--Would us, Pip?"
The something I had noticed before, clicked in the man's
throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and
his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made
of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which
was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed
surprised to see him, or interested in seeing him, or glad to see
him, or sorry to see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody in
the boat growled as if to dogs, "Give way, you!" which was the
signal for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, we saw
a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty
chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like
the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him taken
up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were flung
hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with
him.