Great Expectations
“They must ha’ thought better on’t for some reason or another,” 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.”
“_I_ knows what I thinks,” observed the Jack.
“_You_ thinks Custom ’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 Custom ’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, and
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.
This dialogue 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 four-oared galley
hovering 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 (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 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 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 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 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, 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-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 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 look-out 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 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 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 endeavour 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