Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (speed reading book TXT) 📕

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

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 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 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 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,

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

that opportunity of saying good by 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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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

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.

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 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