Great Expectations
_his_ mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer,
that I could make out nothing of it but the single word “Pip.”
“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after
sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they’re
firing warning of another.”
“_Who’s_ firing?” said I.
“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work,
“what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no
lies.”
It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be
told lies by her even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite
unless there was company.
At this point Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the utmost
pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form of a
word that looked to me like “sulks.” Therefore, I naturally pointed to
Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of saying, “her?” But Joe
wouldn’t hear of that, at all, and again opened his mouth very wide,
and shook the form of a most emphatic word out of it. But I could make
nothing of the word.
“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if you
wouldn’t much mind—where the firing comes from?”
“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t quite mean
that but rather the contrary. “From the Hulks!”
“Oh-h!” said I, looking at Joe. “Hulks!”
Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, “Well, I told you so.”
“And please, what’s Hulks?” said I.
“That’s the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me out
with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer him one
question, and he’ll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships,
right ’cross th’ meshes.” We always used that name for marshes, in our
country.
“I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re put there?” said
I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.
It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what,
young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to badger
people’s lives out. It would be blame to me and not praise, if I had.
People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob,
and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking
questions. Now, you get along to bed!”
I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went
upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe’s thimble
having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words,—I
felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were
handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking
questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.
Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought
that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under terror.
No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in
mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in
mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal
terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had
no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me
at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I might have done on
requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.
If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting
down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate
calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the
gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at
once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been
inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob
the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no
getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one I must have
struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very
pirate himself rattling his chains.
As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was
shot with grey, I got up and went downstairs; every board upon the way,
and every crack in every board calling after me, “Stop thief!” and “Get
up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied
than usual, owing to the season, I was very much alarmed by a hare
hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught, when my back
was half turned, winking. I had no time for verification, no time for
selection, no time for anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole
some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I
tied up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night’s slice), some
brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had
secretly used for making that intoxicating fluid,
Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from
a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and
a beautiful round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the
pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that
was put away so carefully in a covered earthenware dish in a corner,
and I found it was the pie, and I took it in the hope that it was not
intended for early use, and would not be missed for some time.
There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I
unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe’s tools.
Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the door at which
I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the
misty marshes.
Chapter III.
It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the
outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there
all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw
the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort
of spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.
On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so
thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our
village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came
there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I
looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience
like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.
The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that
instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me.
This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and
banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly
as could be, “A boy with somebody else’s pork pie! Stop him!” The
cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes,
and steaming out of their nostrils, “Halloa, young thief!” One black
ox, with a white cravat on,—who even had to my awakened conscience
something of a clerical air,—fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and
moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved
round, that I blubbered out to him, “I couldn’t help it, sir! It wasn’t
for myself I took it!” Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of
smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and
a flourish of his tail.
All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I
went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted,
as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I
knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there
on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that
when I was ’prentice to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks
there! However, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last
too far to the right, and consequently had to try back along the
river-side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes
that staked the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I
had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and
had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man
sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded,
and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.
I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast,
in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on
the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but
another man!
And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a great iron
on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was everything that
the other man was; except that he had not the same face, and had a flat
broad-brimmed low-crowned felt hat on. All this I saw in a moment, for
I had only a moment to see it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at
me,—it was a round weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself
down, for it made him stumble,—and then he ran into the mist, stumbling
twice as he went, and I lost him.
“It’s the young man!” I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified
him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had
known where it was.
I was soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right
man,—hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all
night left off hugging and limping,—waiting for me. He was awfully
cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face
and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry too, that
when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass, it
occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my
bundle. He did not turn me upside down this time to get at what I had,
but left me right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my
pockets.
“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.
“Brandy,” said I.
He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious
manner,—more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent
hurry, than a man who was eating it,—but he left off to take some of
the liquor. He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite
as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his
teeth, without biting it off.
“I think you have got the ague,” said I.
“I’m much of your opinion, boy,” said he.
“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying out on the
meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”
“I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,” said he. “I’d do
that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is
over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat the shivers so far, I’ll bet
you.”
He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all
at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round
us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen. Some real or
fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the
marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly,—
“You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?”
“No, sir! No!”
“Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?”
“No!”
“Well,” said he, “I believe you. You’d be but a fierce young hound
indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched
warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint
is!”
Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock,
and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over
his eyes.
Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down
upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”
“Did you speak?”
“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”
“Thankee, my boy. I do.”
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now
noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating, and the