Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - Chapter 54

light and winter in the shade. We had our 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 they 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 boats 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 Herbert in the bow, I steering. It was then about

high water 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 Canton, Essex, where the river is broad and solid terry, where the water side inhabitants are very few, and where 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 aboard, 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 bare, 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 steady stroke that was to last all day. At that time, the steam traffic on the Thames was far below its present extent, and the watermen's boats were far more numerous. Of barges, sailing, colliers and coasting traders there were perhaps as many as now, but of steamships 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 in those days than it is in these. And we went ahead among many skiffs and werries, briskly. Old London Bridge was soon passed an old Billingscape market, with its oyster boats and dutchmen, and the White Tower and Trader'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 immensely high out of the water as we passed alongside. Here were colliers by the score, and score were the coal whippers plunging off stages on deck as counterweights to measures of coals swinging up, which were then rattled over the side into barges. Here at her moorings was Tomorrow's steamer for Rotterdam, of which we took good notice. And

here Tomorrow'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 in 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, thank ye, thank ye again. Among the tiers of shipping in and out, avoiding rusty 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 the figurehead of the John of Sunderland making his speech to the winds, as is done by many Johns, and the Betsy of Yarmouth, with a firm formality of bosom and

her knobby 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 unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea creatures, roaring curses over the bulwarks that responded lightermen in and out out at last upon the clearer river, where the ship's 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 aboard. And ever since I had looked warily for any token of our being suspected, I had seen none. We certainly had not been, And at that time, as certainly we were not either attended or followed by any boat. If we had been waited on by any boat, I should have run into 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 it 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 gentlemen. One of the 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 himself. If you know, dear boy, he said to me, what it is to sit here no longer? My dear dear boy, and have my smoke. Ar'd 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 goin 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 to the other side of the world. I was always a lookin 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 will 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. Well, he returned, drawing a long breath. I hope so, and

think so. He dipped his hand in the water over the boat's gunnel and said, smiling with that softened air upon him, which was not new to me. Ay, I suppose 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 flowin so soft and pleasant through the water, perhaps as makes me think it. I was a thinkin 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 there 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 beit on it, dear boy. It comes a flowing on so quiet, and of that there rippling at the boat's head, making a sort of a Sunday tune. Maybe I'm 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 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 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 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 mud banks. 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 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 brown sail had followed, And some ballast liders shaped like a child's first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud, and 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 tide marks 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 worked now, but Herbert and star Top 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 of 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 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 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 fowls.

At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently, afterwards 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 the 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 mail creature, the Jack of the little causeway, who was as slimy and smeary as if he had been a 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 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 bam boxes 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 wash ashore, ask me if we had seen a fore ord 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 have thought better on it for some reason or other, said the jack, and gone down a four ord 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 have 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. I knows what I thinks, observed the jack. You think's customs 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, that 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 sewed em to come up small salad, done with their buttons? Don't be cheeky, Jack, remonstrated the landlord in a melancholy and pathetic way. Accustom 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. I'm both with and against another without there being custom 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. The dialog 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 fore ared galley hovered about in so unusual a way as

to attract this notice. Was an ugly circumstance that I could not get rid of. When I had induced provis to go up to bed, I went outside with my two companions. Star Top by this time knew this 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 our 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 for a few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign of the house the ship was creaking and banging about with no 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 star Top 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. 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 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 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 reconnoiter, 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 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

footprints 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 there 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. 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 that opportunity of saying good

bye to Herbert and startop. We'd 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 star Top to keep before the tide, that she might see us lying by for her, and I had dured 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 skillfully 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 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 paddles 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 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 when the force of the tide, and saw that all hands on board the sie steamer were running forward quite frantically. Still in the same moment, I saw the prisoners 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 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 whears and a thousand flashes

of light. That instant passed. I was taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and star Top 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, 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 in 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 freely. He was taken on board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and ankles. The galley was kept steady, and the silent,

eager lookout 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 lookout 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, 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 breathing 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 Copysen, 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 endeavor of his captor to keep him in

it had capsized us. He told 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 officers. 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 men 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. 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. 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

with 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 identify him, I could not doubt that he would be leniently treated. I could not hope he who had been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken prison and 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 toward 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. Dear boy, he answered, I'm quite content to take my chance. I've seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me. No, I had thought about that while we have 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. Lookye 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 a longer. Wemmick, Sit where I can see you when I am swore to for the last of many times,

and I don't ask no more. I will never stir from your side, said I, when I am suffered to be near you, Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been 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. End of chapter