Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖

good fires in-doors and were keeping

the day. A few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after

us, but none came out. We passed the finger-post, and held straight

on to the churchyard. There we were stopped a few minutes by a

signal from the sergeant’s hand, while two or three of his men

dispersed themselves among the graves, and also examined the porch.

They came in again without finding anything, and then we struck out

on the open marshes, through the gate at the side of the

churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling against us here on the

east wind, and Joe took me on his back.

Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they little

thought I had been within eight or nine hours and had seen both men

hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread, if we

should come upon them, would my particular convict suppose that it

was I who had brought the soldiers there? He had asked me if I was

a deceiving imp, and he had said I should be a fierce young hound

if I joined the hunt against him. Would he believe that I was both

imp and hound in treacherous earnest, and had betrayed him?

It was of no use asking myself this question now. There I was, on

Joe’s back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the ditches

like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman

nose, and to keep up with us. The soldiers were in front of us,

extending into a pretty wide line with an interval between man and

man. We were taking the course I had begun with, and from which I

had diverged in the mist. Either the mist was not out again yet, or

the wind had dispelled it. Under the low red glare of sunset, the

beacon, and the gibbet, and the mound of the Battery, and the

opposite shore of the river, were plain, though all of a watery

lead color.

With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe’s broad shoulder, I

looked all about for any sign of the convicts. I could see none, I

could hear none. Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me more than once,

by his blowing and hard breathing; but I knew the sounds by this

time, and could dissociate them from the object of pursuit. I got a

dreadful start, when I thought I heard the file still going; but it

was only a sheep-bell. The sheep stopped in their eating and looked

timidly at us; and the cattle, their heads turned from the wind and

sleet, stared angrily as if they held us responsible for both

annoyances; but, except these things, and the shudder of the dying

day in every blade of grass, there was no break in the bleak

stillness of the marshes.

The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery,

and we were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a

sudden, we all stopped. For there had reached us on the wings of

the wind and rain, a long shout. It was repeated. It was at a

distance towards the east, but it was long and loud. Nay, there

seemed to be two or more shouts raised together,—if one might

judge from a confusion in the sound.

To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking under

their breath, when Joe and I came up. After another moment’s

listening, Joe (who was a good judge) agreed, and Mr. Wopsle (who

was a bad judge) agreed. The sergeant, a decisive man, ordered that

the sound should not be answered, but that the course should be

changed, and that his men should make towards it “at the double.”

So we slanted to the right (where the East was), and Joe pounded

away so wonderfully, that I had to hold on tight to keep my seat.

It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two words

he spoke all the time, “a Winder.” Down banks and up banks, and

over gates, and splashing into dikes, and breaking among coarse

rushes: no man cared where he went. As we came nearer to the

shouting, it became more and more apparent that it was made by more

than one voice. Sometimes, it seemed to stop altogether, and then

the soldiers stopped. When it broke out again, the soldiers made

for it at a greater rate than ever, and we after them. After a

while, we had so run it down, that we could hear one voice calling

“Murder!” and another voice, “Convicts! Runaways! Guard! This way

for the runaway convicts!” Then both voices would seem to be

stifled in a struggle, and then would break out again. And when it

had come to this, the soldiers ran like deer, and Joe too.

The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down,

and two of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were cocked

and levelled when we all ran in.

“Here are both men!” panted the sergeant, struggling at the bottom

of a ditch. “Surrender, you two! and confound you for two wild

beasts! Come asunder!”

Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being

sworn, and blows were being struck, when some more men went down

into the ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, separately,

my convict and the other one. Both were bleeding and panting and

execrating and struggling; but of course I knew them both directly.

“Mind!” said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged

sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers: “I took him! I give

him up to you! Mind that!”

“It’s not much to be particular about,” said the sergeant; “it’ll do

you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself.

Handcuffs there!”

“I don’t expect it to do me any good. I don’t want it to do me more

good than it does now,” said my convict, with a greedy laugh. “I

took him. He knows it. That’s enough for me.”

The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the old

bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all

over. He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they

were both separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep

himself from falling.

“Take notice, guard,—he tried to murder me,” were his first words.

“Tried to murder him?” said my convict, disdainfully. “Try, and not

do it? I took him, and giv’ him up; that’s what I done. I not only

prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here,—

dragged him this far on his way back. He’s a gentleman, if you

please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again,

through me. Murder him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I

could do worse and drag him back!”

The other one still gasped, “He tried—he tried-to—murder me.

Bear—bear witness.”

“Lookee here!” said my convict to the sergeant. “Single-handed I

got clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could

ha’ got clear of these death-cold flats likewise —look at my leg:

you won’t find much iron on it—if I hadn’t made the discovery that

he was here. Let him go free? Let him profit by the means as I found

out? Let him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no,

no. If I had died at the bottom there,” and he made an emphatic

swing at the ditch with his manacled hands, “I’d have held to him

with that grip, that you should have been safe to find him in my

hold.”

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his

companion, repeated, “He tried to murder me. I should have been a

dead man if you had not come up.”

“He lies!” said my convict, with fierce energy. “He’s a liar born,

and he’ll die a liar. Look at his face; ain’t it written there? Let

him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it.”

The other, with an effort at a scornful smile, which could not,

however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set

expression, looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the

marshes and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.

“Do you see him?” pursued my convict. “Do you see what a villain he

is? Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That’s how he

looked when we were tried together. He never looked at me.”

The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his

eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a

moment on the speaker, with the words, “You are not much to look

at,” and with a half-taunting glance at the bound hands. At that

point, my convict became so frantically exasperated, that he would

have rushed upon him but for the interposition of the soldiers.

“Didn’t I tell you,” said the other convict then, “that he would

murder me, if he could?” And any one could see that he shook with

fear, and that there broke out upon his lips curious white flakes,

like thin snow.

“Enough of this parley,” said the sergeant. “Light those torches.”

As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went

down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the

first time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe’s back on the brink

of the ditch when we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at

him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and

shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me that I might

try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed to

me that he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look

that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if he

had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have

remembered his face ever afterwards, as having been more attentive.

The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three or

four torches, and took one himself and distributed the others. It

had been almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and soon

afterwards very dark. Before we departed from that spot, four

soldiers standing in a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently we

saw other torches kindled at some distance behind us, and others on

the marshes on the opposite bank of the river. “All right,” said

the sergeant. “March.”

We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of us with a

sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear. “You are

expected on board,” said the sergeant to my convict; “they know you

are coming. Don’t straggle, my man. Close up here.”

The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a separate

guard. I had hold of Joe’s hand now, and Joe carried one of the

torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe was resolved to

see it out, so we went on with the party. There was a reasonably

good path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with a divergence

here and there where a dike came, with a miniature windmill on it

and a muddy sluice-gate. When I looked round, I could see the other

lights coming in after us. The torches we carried dropped great

blotches of fire upon the track, and I could see those, too, lying

smoking and flaring.