Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖
- Author: Charles Dickens
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quiet and easy-going than we are at present. But—it’s a flowing
so soft and pleasant through the water, p’raps, as makes me think
it—I was a thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no
more see to the bottom of the next few hours than we can see to
the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t
no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it’s run through
my fingers and gone, you see!” holding up his dripping hand.
“But for your face I should think you were a little despondent,”
said I.
“Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet, and of
that there rippling at the boat’s head making a sort of a Sunday
tune. Maybe I’m a growing a trifle old besides.”
He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expression of
face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already out
of England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as if he
had been in constant terror; for, when we ran ashore to get some
bottles of beer into the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted
that I thought he would be safest where he was, and he said. “Do
you, dear boy?” and quietly sat down again.
The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the
sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to
lose none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly
well. By imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran out, we lost more
and more of the nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and lower
between the muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us when we were
off Gravesend. As our charge was wrapped in his cloak, I purposely
passed within a boat or two’s length of the floating Custom House,
and so out to catch the stream, alongside of two emigrant ships,
and under the bows of a large transport with troops on the
forecastle looking down at us. And soon the tide began to slacken,
and the craft lying at anchor to swing, and presently they had all
swung round, and the ships that were taking advantage of the new
tide to get up to the Pool began to crowd upon us in a fleet, and
we kept under the shore, as much out of the strength of the tide
now as we could, standing carefully off from low shallows and
mudbanks.
Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let her
drive with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an
hour’s rest proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore among
some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had with us,
and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and
monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding river turned
and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and turned,
and everything else seemed stranded and still. For now the last
of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had headed;
and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown sail, had
followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child’s first
rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat
shoal-lighthouse on open piles stood crippled in the mud on stilts
and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy
stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck
out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless building
slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud.
We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was much harder
work now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and rowed and rowed
and rowed until the sun went down. By that time the river had
lifted us a little, so that we could see above the bank. There was
the red sun, on the low level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast
deepening into black; and there was the solitary flat marsh; and
far away there were the rising grounds, between which and us there
seemed to be no life, save here and there in the foreground a
melancholy gull.
As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the
full, would not rise early, we held a little council; a short one,
for clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we
could find. So, they plied their oars once more, and I looked out
for anything like a house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for
four or five dull miles. It was very cold, and, a collier coming by
us, with her galley-fire smoking and flaring, looked like a
comfortable home. The night was as dark by this time as it would be
until morning; and what light we had, seemed to come more from the
river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few
reflected stars.
At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that
we were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at irregular
intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound came, one or
other of us was sure to start, and look in that direction. Here and
there, the set of the current had worn down the bank into a little
creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them
nervously. Sometimes, “What was that ripple?” one of us would say
in a low voice. Or another, “Is that a boat yonder?” And
afterwards we would fall into a dead silence, and I would sit
impatiently thinking with what an unusual amount of noise the oars
worked in the thowels.
At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently afterwards
ran alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been picked
up hard by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and
found the light to be in a window of a public-house. It was a dirty
place enough, and I dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers;
but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and
bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink. Also, there were two
double-bedded rooms,—“such as they were,” the landlord said. No
other company was in the house than the landlord, his wife, and a
grizzled male creature, the “Jack” of the little causeway, who was
as slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water mark too.
With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all came
ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder and boat-hook, and
all else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very good meal
by the kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms: Herbert and
Startop were to occupy one; I and our charge the other. We found
the air as carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to
life; and there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the
beds than I should have thought the family possessed. But we
considered ourselves well off, notwithstanding, for a more solitary
place we could not have found.
While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, the
Jack—who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair of
shoes on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs and
bacon, as interesting relics that he had taken a few days ago from
the feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore—asked me if we had
seen a four-oared galley going up with the tide? When I told him
No, he said she must have gone down then, and yet she “took up
too,” when she left there.
“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 Custum ‘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 Custum ‘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 Custum ‘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
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