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.
Date: 2015-04-20; view: 477
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