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

Chapter LIV

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind

blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the

shade. We had out 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 I 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 boat 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 Kent and Essex,

where the river is broad and solitary, 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 abroad, 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 air,

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 watermen’s boats were far more numerous. Of

barges, sailing colliers, and coasting-traders, there were perhaps,

as many as now; but of steam-ships, 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 wherries briskly.

Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate Market with

its oyster-boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and Traitor’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, with the coal-whippers

plunging off stages on deck, as counterweights to measures of coal

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, and 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. Thankye, thankye!”

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 figure-head of the John of Sunderland making a 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 ship-builders’ 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 at

respondent lightermen, in and out,—out at last upon the clearer

river, where the ships’ 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 abroad, 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 in to 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 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 gentleman 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 knowed, dear boy,” he said to me, “what it is to sit here

alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having 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 going 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, t’other side the world,

I was always a looking 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 would

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 gunwale, and said,

smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me:—

“Ay, I s’pose I think so, dear