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Charles Dickens 36 page

ing 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 steady stroke

that was to last all day.

At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far be-

low its present extent, and watermen’s boats were far more

numerous. Of barges, sailing colliers, and coasting trad-

ers, 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 bridges,

in an open boat, was a much easier and commoner matter

Great Expectations

in those days than it is in these; and we went ahead among

many skiffs 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, and looking im-

mensely high out of the water as we passed alongside; 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 beat-

ing 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 black canvas bag, and he looked as like a

river-pilot as my heart could have wished. ‘Dear boy!’ he

said, putting his arm on my shoulder as he took his seat.

‘Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!’

Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoid-

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ing rusty chain-cables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing

buoys, sinking for the moment floating broken baskets, scat-

tering floating chips of wood and shaving, cleaving floating

scum of coal, in and out, under the figure-head of the John

of Sunderland making a speech to the winds (as is done by

many Johns), and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formal-

ity of bosom and her nobby eyes starting two inches out of

her head, in and out, hammers going in shipbuilders’yards,

saws going at timber, clashing engines going at things un-

known, 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 sus-

pected. I had seen none. We certainly had not been, and at

that time as certainly we were not, either attended or fol-

lowed 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 to see his gentleman one of the

Great Expectations

best of gentlemen in a foreign 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 him-

self.‘If you knowed, dear boy,’ he said to me, ‘what 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 equal to me. You must have been under lock and

key, dear boy, to know it equal to me - but I ain’t a-going

to be low.’

It occurred to me as inconsistent, that for any master-

ing 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, if they knowed where I was.’

‘If all goes well,’ said I, ‘you will be perfectly free and safe

again, within a few hours.’

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‘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 so soft and pleasant through the water, p’raps, as

makes me think 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 despon-

dent,’ said I.

‘Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet,

and of that there rippling at the boat’s head making a sort of

a Sunday 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

Great Expectations

care to lose none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on

thoroughly well. By imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran

out, we lost more 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 with troops

on the forecastle looking down at us. And soon the tide be-

gan 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, stand-

ing carefully off from low shallows and mudbanks.

Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasion-

ally 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 want-

ed. We got ashore among some slippery stones while we ate

and drank what we had with us, 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

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a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled

in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck

out of the mud, and slimy 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 perse-

vered, 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 us, with her galley-fire smoking

and flaring, looked like a 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

Great Expectations

the idea that we were followed. As the tide made, it flapped

heavily at irregular intervals against the shore; and when-

ever 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 ner-

vously. Sometimes, ‘What was that 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 worked in the thowels.

At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently af-

terwards ran alongside a little causeway made of stones that

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-bed-

ded 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.With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and

we all came 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 by the kitchen fire, and then

apportioned the bedrooms: Herbert and Startop were to

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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 bacon, as interesting relics that he

had taken a few days ago from the feet of a drowned seaman

washed ashore - asked me if we had seen a four-oared gal-

ley 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 an-

other,’ 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

if much mud had washed into his throat.

‘He thinks,’ said the landlord: a weakly meditative man

with a pale eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack: ‘he

thinks they was, what they wasn’t.’

 

Great Expectations

‘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 great-

est contempt, ‘when they comes betwixt him and his own

light. A Four and two sitters don’t go hanging and hover-

ing, 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 impracti-

cable to pursue the subject.

This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy.

The dismal wind was muttering round the house, the tide

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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 cir-

cumstance that I could not get rid of. When I had induced

Provis to go up to bed, I went outside with my two com-

panions (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 whether we should put off early in

the morning; was the question we discussed. On the whole

we deemed it the better 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 set-

tled 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 for a few hours. When I awoke, the wind had ris-

en, and the sign of 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

 

Great Expectations

mine, that he and Startop had had a harder day than I, and

were fatigued, I forbore. Going back to my window, I could

see the two men moving over the marsh. In that light, how-

ever, 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 to-

gether, before breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I

had seen. Again our charge was the least anxious of the par-

ty. 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 that he and I should walk

away together to a distant point we could 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 sup-

posed 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 went on alone.

There was no boat off the point, nor any boat drawn up any-

where 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

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saw that I waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me,

and there we waited; sometimes lying on the bank wrapped

in our coats, and sometimes moving about to warm our-

selves: 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 anoth-

er steamer. As they were coming on at full speed, we got

the two bags ready, and took that opportunity of saying

good-bye to Herbert and Startop. We had all shaken hands

cordially, and neither Herbert’s eyes nor mine were quite

dry, when I saw a four-oared galley shoot out from under

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. Meantime the galley, which

was very skilfully handled, had crossed 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 atten-

tively - as did all the rowers; the other sitter was wrapped

 

Great Expectations

up, much as Provis was, and seemed to shrink, and whis-

per 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 direc-

tion 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 confu-

sion 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

the same moment, I saw the steersman of the galley lay his

hand on 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

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other convict of long ago. Still in the same moment, I saw

the face tilt backward with a white terror on it that 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 mill-weirs and a thousand flashes of light; that

instant past, I 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 furi-

ous 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 water, and

kept the boat straight and true before it. As it came nearer, I

saw it to be Magwitch, swimming, but not swimming free-

ly. 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 hap-

pened, 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.

 

Great Expectations

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 to-

wards the tavern we had lately left, where we were received

with no little surprise. Here, I was able to get some comforts

for Magwitch - Provis no longer - who had received some

very severe injury in the 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 breath-

ing extremely painful) he thought he had received against

the side of the galley. He added that he did not pretend to

say what he might or might not have done to Compeyson,

but, that in the moment of his laying his 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 endeavour of his captor to keep him in it, had capsized

us. He told me in a whisper that they had gone down, fierce-

ly 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 pris-

oner’s wet clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could

get at the public-house, he gave it readily: merely observ-

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ing that he must take charge of everything his prisoner had

about him. So the pocketbook 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 in-

terest 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.

We remained at the public-house until the tide turned,

and then 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.


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