 1 My father's family name being Pirup and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than PIP. So I called myself PIP, and came to be called PIP. I gave Pirup as my father's family name on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them, for their days were long before the days of photographs, my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, also Georgiana, wife of the above, I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle. I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trouser pockets, had never taken them out in this state of existence. Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard, and that Philip Pirip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana, wife of the above, were dead and buried, and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried, and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes, and that the low leaden line beyond was the river, and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea, and that the small bundle of shivers, growing afraid of it all, and beginning to cry, was Pip. How'd ya noise! cried a terrible voice, as if man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch, capestell ya little devil, or I'll cut ya throat! A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg, a man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head, a man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lame'd by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars, who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled, and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin. Oh, don't cut my throat, sir! I pleaded in terror. Pray don't do it, sir. Tell us your name, said the man. Quick. Pip, sir. Once more, said the man, staring at me. Give it mouth! Pip. Pip, sir. Shall I swear you live, said the man. Point out the place! I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat inshore, among the alder trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church. The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet. When the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously. Yo, young dog! said the man, licking his lips. What fat cheeks you agon! I believed they were fat, although I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong. Darn me if I couldn't eat them, said the man, with the threatening shake of his head, and if I haven't half a mind to it. I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me, partly to keep myself upon it, partly to keep myself from crying. Now look here, said the man, where's your mother? There, sir, said I. He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. There, sir, I timidly explained. Also Georgiana, that's my mother. Oh! said he, coming back. And is that your father, along with your mother? Yes, sir, said I. Him, too, late of this parish. Ha! he muttered then, considering. Who do you live with? Supposing you're kindly let to live, what you hadn't made up my mind about? My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir. Blacksmith, eh? said he, and he looked down at his leg. After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me, so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his. Now look here, he said, the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is? Yes, sir. And you know what Whittles is? Yes, sir. After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger. You get me a file! he tilted me again. And you get me Whittles! he tilted me again. You bring them both to me! he tilted me again. Or I'll have your art and liver out! he tilted me again. I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, if you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more. He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then he held me by the arms in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms. You bring me, tomorrow morning early, that file of them Whittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word, or dare to make a sign concerning you having seen such a person as me, or any person so ever, and you shall be led to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any particular, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am an angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way peculiar to himself of getting at a boy and at his heart and at his liver. It is in vain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck his self up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and syph, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a-keeping that young man from harm of you at the present moment with great difficulty. I find it very hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say? I said I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and would come to him at the battery early in the morning. Say, Lord, strike your dead if you don't, said the man. I said so, and he took me down. Now, he pursued, you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home. Good night, sir, I faltered. Much of that, said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. I wish I was a frog or a eel. At the same time he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms, clasping himself as if to hold himself together and limp towards the low church wall. As I saw him go picking his way among the nettles and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in. When he came to the low church wall he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning I set my face towards home and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or the tide was in. The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him, and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black, and the sky was just a row of long, angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright. One of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it, the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this ladder as if he were the pirate come to life and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so, and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so, too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping. CHAPTER II My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors because she had brought me up by hand. Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand. Joe was not a good-looking woman, my sister, and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easygoing, foolish, dear fellow, a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness. My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself and a strong reproach against Joe that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all, or why if she did wear it at all she should not have taken it off every day of her life. Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in our country were, most of them at that time. When I ran home from the churchyard the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I, being fellow sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner. Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times looking for you, Pip, and she's out now, making it a baker's dozen. Is she? Yes, Pip, said Joe. And what's worse, she's got Tickler with her. At this dismal intelligence I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame. She sat down, said Joe, and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she rampaged out. That's what she did, said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker and looking at it. She rampaged out, Pip. Has she been gone long, Joe? I always treated him as a larger species of child and as no more than my equal. Well, said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock. She's been on the rampage this last bell about five minutes, Pip. She's a-comin', get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt ya. I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by throwing me, I often served as a cannubial missile, at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg. Where have you been, you young monkey? said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with fret and fright and worry, or I'll have you out of that corner if you was fifty pips and he was five hundred gargaries. I have only been to the churchyard, said I, from my stool, crying and rubbing myself. Churchyard, repeated my sister, if it weren't for me you'd have been to the churchyard long ago and stayed there. Who brought you up by hand? You did, said I. And why did I do it? I should like to know, exclaimed my sister. I whimpered. I don't know. I don't, said my sister. I'd never do it again. I know that I may truly say that I've never had this apron of mine off since born you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife and him a gargery without being your mother. My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolently at the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the phial, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises rose before me in the avenging coals. Ha! said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you too. One of us, by the by, had not said it at all. You'll drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a precious pair you'd be without me! As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make under the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that he sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whiskers, and following Mrs. Joe about with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times. My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread and butter for us that never varied. First with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib, where it sometimes got a pin into it, and sometimes a needle which we afterwards got into our mouths. Then she took some butter, not too much, on a knife, and spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaster, using both sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and molding the butter off round the crust. Then she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of the plaster, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf, which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other. On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my larceness researches might find nothing available in the safe. Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of my trousers. The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our already mentioned freemasonry as fellow sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then, which stimulated us to new exertions. Tonight Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition. But he found me each time with my yellow mug of tea on one knee and my untouched bread and butter on the other. At last I desperately considered that the thing I contemplated must be done and that it had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at me and got my bread and butter down my leg. Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss of appetite and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than usual, pondering over at a good deal, and after all gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite and had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it when his eye fell on me and he saw that my bread and butter was gone. The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and stared at me were too evident to escape my sister's observation. What's the matter now? said she smartly as she put down her cup. I say, you know—mother Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious remonstrance—pip, old chap, you'll do yourself a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chewed it, Pip. What's the matter now? repeated my sister more sharply than before. If you can cough any trifle of it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do it, said Joe, all aghast. Manners is manners, but still your elf, your elf. By this time my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him while I sat in the corner looking guiltily on. Now perhaps she'll mention what's the matter? said my sister out of breath. You staring great stuck pig! Joe looked at her in a helpless way, then took a helpless bite and looked at me again. You know, Pip, said Joe solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice as if we two were quite alone. You and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell upon you any time. But such a—he moved his chair and looked about the floor between us and then again at me. Such a most uncommon bolt is that! Been bolting his food, has he? cried my sister. You know, old chap, said Joe, looking at me and not at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in his cheek. I bolted myself when I was your age—frequent! And as a boy I've been among a many bolters. But I never seen your bolting equal yet, Pip. And it's a mercy, you ain't bolted dead. My sister made a dive at me and fished me up by the hair, saying nothing more than the awful words, You come along and be dosed! Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard, having a belief in its virtues that it belonged to its nastiness. At the best of times so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative that I was conscious of going about smelling like a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat for my greater comfort while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm as a boot would be held in a boot-jack. He sat with half a pint, but was made to swallow that much to his disturbance as he sat slowly munching and meditating before the fire. Because he had had a turn, judging from myself I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards if he had had none before. Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accurses man or boy, but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden cooperates with another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is, as I can testify, a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his. United to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread and butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare I thought I heard the voice outside of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy, declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until tomorrow, but must be fed now. At other times I thought, what if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbrewing his hands in me should yield to a constitutional impatience or should mistake the time and should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night instead of tomorrow? If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then. But perhaps nobody's ever did? It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day with a copper stick from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I tried it with the load upon my leg, and that made me think afresh of the man with the load on his leg, and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread and butter out at my ankle quite unmanageable. Happily I slipped away and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom. Park! said I when I had done my stirring and was taking a final warm in the chimney corner before being set up to bed. Was that great guns, Joe? Ah! said Joe. There's another convict off. What does that mean, Joe? said I. Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly, Escaped! Escaped! administering the definition like tar-water. While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, What's a convict? Joe put 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 convict 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 making 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! 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 across the meshes. We always use 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 blamed to me and not praise if I had. People are put into hulks because they murder and because they rob and forge and do all sorts of bad. 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 being 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 immortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver. I was immortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg. I was immortal terror of myself from whom an awful promise had been extracted. I had no hope of deliverance to 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 gray, I got up and went downstairs, every board upon the way, and every crack at 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 licorice 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 for the misty marshes. End of chapter 3 of Great Expectations. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, chapter 3. It was a rainy 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 spider's 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 dykes 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-sudness, staring out of their eyes and steaming out of their nostrils. Hello, young thief! One black ox with a white cravaton 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 in 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'd been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I was prenticed to him, utterly 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 riverside, on the bank of loose stones, above the mud and the stakes that stake the tide out. Making my way along here with all dispatch, 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. 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 gray too, with 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 he missed, 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 daresay 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. 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 and 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 a 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 agieu, 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 before 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 around us and often stopping, even stopping his jaws, to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river breathing a 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 give 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 varmit, hunted as near death and dung-hill as this poor wretched varmit is. Something clicked in his throat as if he had worked in him like a clock and was going to strike and he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over his eyes, pitting his desolation and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie. I made bold to say, I'm glad you enjoy it. Did you, spake? I said I was glad you enjoyed it. Thank ye, 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 man's. The man took strong, sharp, sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor, in all of which particulars he was very like the dog. I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him, said I timidly after a silence that I had hesitated as to the politeness of making the remark. There's no more to be got where that came from. It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint. Lave any for him. Who's him? said my friend, stopping in his crunching of pie crust. The young man that you spoke of, that was hid with you. Oh, ah-ha-ha! He returned with something like a gruff laugh. Him! Ha-ha! Yes, yes. He don't want no widdles. I thought he looked as if he did, said I. The man stopped eating and regarded me with a keenest scrutiny and the greatest surprise. Looked when? Just now? Where? Yonder, said I, pointing, over there where I found him nodding asleep and thought it was you. He held me by the collar and stared at me so that I began to think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived. Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat, I explained, trembling, and I was very anxious to put this delicately. And with the same reason for wanting to borrow a file, didn't you hear the cannon last night? Then there was firing, he said to himself. I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that, I returned, for we heard it up at home and that's farther away and we were shut in besides. Why, see now, said he, when a man's alone on these flats with a light head and a light stomach perishing a cold in want, he hears nothing all night but guns firing and voices calling. He hears, he sees the soldiers with their red coats loited up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him. He hears his number-call, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders, make ready, present, cover him, steady man, and his laid hands on. And there's nothing. I see one pursuing party last night, coming up in order, dam them with their tramp, tramp. I see a hundred and as to firing, why, I see the miss shake with the cannon, alter it with broad day. But this man, he had said all the rest as if he had forgotten my being there. Did you notice anything in him? He had a badly bruised face, said I, calling what I hardly knew I knew. Not here! exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly with a flat of his hand. Yes, there. Where is he? He crammed what little food was left into the breast of his grey jacket. Show me the way he went. I'll pull him down like a bloodhound, curse this iron on my sore leg. Give us hold of the file, boy. I indicated in what direction the communist had shrouded the other man and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet grass filing at his iron like a madman and not minding me or minding his own leg which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry and I was likewise very much afraid of him at home any longer. I told him I must go but he took no notice so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw of him his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his fetter muttering impatient implications at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him I stopped in the midst to listen and the file was still going. End of chapter. CHAPTER IV. I fully expected to find a constable in the kitchen waiting to take me up but not only was there no constable there but no discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of the day and Joe had been put upon the kitchen doorstep to keep him out of the dustpan an article into which his destiny always led him sooner or later when my sister was vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment. And where the deuce have you been? was Mrs. Joe's Christmas salutation when I and my conscience showed ourselves. I said I had been down to hear the carols. Ah, well observed Mrs. Joe. You might have done worse. Not a doubt of that, I thought. Perhaps if I weren't a blacksmith's wife and what's the same thing a slave with her apron never off I should have been to hear the carols said Mrs. Joe. I'm rather partial to carols myself and that's the best of reasons for my never hearing any. Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had retired before us drew the back of his hand across his nose with a conciliatory air when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him and when her eyes were withdrawn secretly crossed his two forefingers and exhibited them to me as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper. This was so much her normal state that Joe and I would often for weeks together be, as to our fingers, like monumental crusaders as to their legs. We were to have a superb dinner consisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince pie had been made yesterday morning which accounted for the mince meat that we missed. And the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in respect of breakfast. For I ain't," said Mrs. Joe, I ain't going to have no formal cramming and busting and washing up now with what I've got before me. I promise you. So we had our slices served out as if we were two thousand troops on a forced march to our home, and we took gulps of milk and water with apologetic countenances from a jug on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up and tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide chimney to replace the old one and uncovered the little state parlor across the passage which was never uncovered at any other time but passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper and little white crockery poodles on the mantel shelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers in his mouth and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness and some people do the same by their religion. My sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working clothes Joe was a well-knit, characteristic looking blacksmith. In his holiday clothes he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances than anything else. Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him and everything that he wore then grazed him. On the present festive occasion in his room, when the Blythe bells were going, the picture of misery in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender whom an Akushua policeman had taken up on my birthday and delivered over to her to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken to have a new suit of clothes the tailor had orders to make them like a kind of reformatory and on no account to let me have the free use of my limbs. Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet what I suffered outside was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry or out of the room were only to be equaled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked secret I pondered whether the church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young man if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived the idea that the time when the bands were read and when the clergyman said, You are now to declare it would be the time for me to rise and propose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure that I might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas day and no Sunday. Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church and Mr. Hubbell the Wheelwright and Mrs. Hubbell, an uncle Pumblechook, Joe's uncle but Mrs. Joe appropriated him who was a well-to-do corn chandler in the nearest town and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half past one. When Joe and I got home we found the table laid and Mrs. Joe dressed and the dinner dressing and the front door unlocked it never was at any other time for the company to enter by and everything most splendid and still not a word of the robbery. The time came without bringing with it any relief to my feelings and the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of. Indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could only give him his head he would read the clergyman into fits. He himself confessed that if the church was thrown open meaning to competition he would not despair of making his mark in it. The church not being thrown open he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the amends tremendously and when he gave out the psalm always giving the whole verse he looked all round the congregation first as much as to say you have heard my friend overhead oblige me with your opinion of this style. I opened the door to the company making believe that it was a habit of ours to open that door and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N. B. I was not allowed to call him Uncle under the severest penalties. And Mrs. Joe said Uncle Pumblechook a large, hard-breathing middle-aged, slow man with a mouth like a fish dull, staring eyes and sandy hair standing upright on his head so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked and had that moment come too. I have brought you as the compliments of the season I have brought you, Mum a bottle of sherry wine and I have brought you, Mum a bottle of port wine. Every Christmas day he presented himself as a profound novelty with exactly the same words and carrying the two bottles like dumbbells. Every Christmas day Mrs. Joe replied as she now replied, Oh, Uncle Pumblechook, this is kind. Every Christmas day he retorted as he now retorted, It's no more than your merits and now are you all bobbish and how's six-pen worth of hot-pots meaning me. We dined on these occasions in the kitchen and adjourned for the nuts and oranges and apples to the parlor which was a change very like Joe's change from his working clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occasion and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly, sharp-edged person in sky blue who held a conventionally juvenile position because she had married Mr. Hubble. I don't know at what remote period when she was much younger than he. I remember Mr. Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man of a saw-dusty fragrance extraordinarily wide apart so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane. Among this good company I should have felt myself even if I hadn't robbed the pantry in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the tablecloth with the table in my chest and the pumblchookian elbow why? Nor because I was not allowed to speak I didn't want to speak nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig went living had had the least reason to be vain. No, I should not have minded that if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost and they failed to point the conversation at me every now and then and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads. It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsill said grace with theatrical declamation as it now appears to me something like a religious cross Richard III and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful upon which my sister fixed me with her eye and said in a low reproachful voice to you hear that be grateful especially said Mr. Pumblechook be grateful boy to them which brought you up by hand Mrs. Hubble shook her head me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to know good asked why is it that the young are never grateful this moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying naturally vicious everybody then murmured true and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner Joe's station and influence were something feebler if possible when there was company then when there was none but he always aided and comforted me when he could in some way of his own and he always did so at dinner time by giving me gravy if there were any there being plenty of gravy today Joe spooned into my plate at this point about half a pint a little later on in the dinner Mr. Wopsill reviewed the sermon with some severity and intimated in the usual hypothetical case of the church being thrown open what kind of sermon he would have given them after favoring them with some heads of that discourse he remarked that he considered the subject of the day's homily ill-chosen which was the less excusable he added when there were so many subjects going about true again said Uncle Pumblechook you hit it sir plenty of subjects going about for them that know how to put salt upon their tails that's what's wanted a man needn't go far to find a subject if he's ready with his salt box Mr. Pumblechook added after a short interval of reflection look at pork alone there's a subject if you want a subject look at pork true sir many a moral for the young return Mr. Wopsill and I knew he was going to lug me in before he said it might be deduced from that text you listen to this said my sister to me in a severe parenthesis Joe gave me some more gravy swine pursued Mr. Wopsill in his deepest voice and pointing his fork at my blushes as if he were mentioning my Christian name swine were the comparisons of the prodigal the gluttony of swine is put before us as an example to the young I thought this pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy what is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy or girl said Mr. Hubbell of course our girl Mr. Hubbell I said to Mr. Wopsill rather irritably but there is no girl present besides Mr. Pumblechook turning sharp on me think what you've got to be grateful for if you'd been born a squeaker he was if ever a child was said my sister most dramatically Joe gave me some more gravy well I mean a four-footed squeaker said Mr. Pumblechook if you had been born such would you have been here now not you unless in that form said Mr. Wopsill nodding towards the dish but I don't mean in that form sir returned Mr. Pumblechook who had an objection to being interrupted I mean enjoying himself with his elders and betters and improving himself with their conversation and rolling in the lap of luxury would he have been doing that no he wouldn't and what would have been your destination turning on me again you would have been disposed of for so many shillings according to the market price of the article and dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you lay on your straw and he would have whipped you under his left arm and with his right he would have tucked up his frock to get a pen knife from out of his waistcoat pocket and he would have shed your blood and had your life no bringing up by hand then not a bit of it Joe offered me more gravy which I was afraid to take he was a world of trouble to you, ma'am said Mrs. Hubble commiserating my sister trouble echoed my sister trouble and then entered on a fearful catalog of all the illnesses I had been guilty of and all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed and all the high places I had tumbled from and all the low places I had too and all the injuries I had done myself and all the time she had wished me in my grave and I had contumaciously refused to go there I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much with their noses perhaps they became the restless people they were in consequence anyhow Mr. Wapsel's Roman nose so aggravated me during the recital of my misdemeanors that I should have to pull it until he howled but all I had endured up to this time was nothing in comparison with the awful feelings that took possession of me when the pause was broken which ensued upon my sister's recital and in which pause everybody had looked at me as I felt painfully conscious with indignation and abhorrence yet said Mr. Pumblechook leading the company gently back to the theme from which they had strayed pork regarded as wild is rich too ain't it have a little brandy uncle said my sister oh heavens it had come at last he would find it was weak he would say it was weak and I was lost I held tight to the leg of the table under the cloth with both hands and awaited my fate my sister went for the stone bottle came back with the stone bottle and poured his brandy out no one else taking any the wretched man trifled with his glass took it up looked at it through the light put it down prolonged my misery all this time Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the pie and pudding I couldn't keep my eyes off him always holding tight to the leg of the table with my hands and feet I saw the miserable creature finger his glass playfully take it up smile throw his head back and drink the brandy off instantly afterwards the company were seized with unspeakable consternation owing to his springing to his feet turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping cough dance and rushing out at the door visible through the window violently plunging and expectorating making the most hideous faces and apparently out of his mind I held on tight while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him I didn't know how I had done it but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow in my dreadful situation it was a relief when he was brought back and surveying the company all round as if they had disagreed with him into his chair with one significant gasp tar I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug I knew he would be worse by and by I moved the table like a medium of the present day by the vigor of my unseen hold upon it tar cried my sister in amazement why how could ever tar come there but Uncle Pumblechook was omnipotent in that kitchen wouldn't hear the word wouldn't hear of the subject imperiously waved it all away with his hand and asked for hot gin and water my sister who had begun to be alarmingly meditative had to employ herself actively in getting the gin the hot water, the sugar and the lemon peel and mixing them for the time being at least I was saved I still held on to the leg of the table I clutched it now with the fervor of gratitude by degrees I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of pudding Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding all partook of pudding the course terminated and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the genial influence of gin and water I began to think I should get over the day when my sister said to Joe clean plates cold I clutched the leg of the table again immediately and pressed it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul I foresaw what was coming and I felt that this time I really was gone you must taste said my sister addressing the guests with her best grace you must taste to finish with such a delightful and delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook's must they let them not hope to taste it you must know said my sister rising it's a pie a savory pork pie the company murmured their compliments Uncle Pumblechook sensible of having deserved well of his fellow creatures said quite vivaciously all things considered well Mrs. Joe we'll do our best endeavors let us have a cut at this same pie my sister went out to get it I heard her steps proceed to the pantry I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife I saw reawakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wapsle I heard Mr. Hubbell remark that a bit of savory pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention and do no harm and I heard Joe say you shall have some, Pip I have never been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror merely in spirit or in the bodily hearing of the company I felt that I could bear no more and that I must run away I released the leg of the table and ran for my life but I ran no farther than the house door for there I ran head foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets and I held out a pair of handcuffs to me saying here you are, look sharp, come on End of chapter Chapter 5 of Great Expectations This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter 5 The apparition of a file of soldiers wringing down the butt ends of their loaded muskets on our doorstep caused the dinner party to rise from table in confusion and caused Mrs. Joe re-entering the kitchen empty-handed to stop short and stare and her wondering lament of gracious goodness gracious me what's gone with the pie The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring at which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses it was the sergeant who had spoken to me and he was now looking round at the company with his handcuffs inviting the extended towards them in his right hand and his left on my shoulder Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen said the sergeant but as I have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver which he hadn't I am on a chase in the name of the king and I want the blacksmith and pray what might you want with him retorted my sister quick to resent his being wanted at all Mrs. returned the gallant sergeant speaking for myself I should reply the honor and pleasure of his fine wife's acquaintance speaking for the king I answer a little job done this was received as rather neat in the sergeant in so much that Mr. Pumblechuck cried audibly good again you'll see blacksmith said the sergeant who had by this time picked out Joe with his eye we have had an accident with these and I find the lock of one of them goes wrong and the coupling don't act pretty as they are wanted for immediate service will you throw your eye over them Joe threw his eye over them and pronounced that the job would necessitate the lighting of his forge fire and would take nearer two hours than one will it then will you set about it at once blacksmith said the offhand sergeant as it's on his majesty's service and if my men can bear a hand anywhere they'll make themselves useful with that he called to his men who came tripping into the kitchen one after another and piled their arms in a corner and then they stood about as soldiers do now with their hands loosely clasped before them now resting a knee or a shoulder now easing a belt or a pouch now opening the door to spit stiffly over their high stocks out into the yard all these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them for I was in an agony of apprehension but beginning to perceive that the handcuffs were not for me and that the military had so far got the better of the pie I put it in the background I collected a little more of my scattered wits well you give me the time said the sergeant addressing himself to Mr. Pumblechook as to a man whose appreciative powers justified the inference that he was equal to the time it's just gone half past two that's not so bad said the sergeant reflecting even if I was forced to halt here that'll do how far might you call yourselves from the marshes hear about not above a mile I reckon just a mile said Mrs. Joe that'll do we begin to close in upon them about dusk a little before dusk my orders are that'll do convict sergeant asked Mr. Wopsle in a matter of course way I return the sergeant two they're pretty well known to be out on the marshes still and they won't try to get clear of them before dusk anybody here seen anything of any such game everybody myself accepted said no with confidence nobody thought of me well said the sergeant they'll find themselves trapped in a circle I expect sooner than they count on now blacksmith his majesty the king is Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and kerbat off and his leather apron on and passed into the forge one of the soldiers opened its wooden windows another lighted the fire another turned two at the bellows the rest stood round the blaze which was soon roaring then Joe began to hammer and clink hammer and clink and we all looked on the interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the general attention but even made my sister liberal she drew a picture of beer from the cask for the soldiers and invited the sergeant to take a glass of brandy but Mr. Pumblechook said sharply give him wine mom I'll engage there's no tar in that so the sergeant thanked him and said that as he preferred his drink without tar he would take wine if it was equally convenient when it was given him he drank his majesty's health and compliments of the season and took it all at a mouthful and smacked his lips good stuff age sergeant said Mr. Pumblechook I'll tell you something returned the sergeant I suspect that stuff's of your providing Mr. Pumblechook with a fat sort of laugh said hi hi why because returned the sergeant clapping him on the shoulder you're a man that knows what's what do you think so said Mr. Pumblechook with his former laugh have another glass with you hub and knob returned the sergeant the top of mind to the foot of yours the foot of yours to the top of mine ring once ring twice the best tune on the musical glasses your health may you live a thousand years and never be a worse judge of the right sort than you are at the present moment of your life the sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready for another glass I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospitality appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine but took the bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of handing it about in a gush of joviality and I got some and he was so very free of the wine that he even called for the other bottle and headed that about with the same liberality when the first was gone as I watched them while they all stood clustering about the forge enjoying themselves so much I thought what terrible good sauce for a dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was they had not enjoyed themselves a quarter so much before the entertainment was brightened after the entertainment he furnished and now when they were all in lively anticipation of the two villains being taken and when the bellows seemed to roar for the fugitives the fire to flare for them the smoke to hurry away in pursuit of them Joe to hammering clink for them and all the murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the blaze rose and sank and the red hot sparks dropped and died the pale afternoon outside almost seemed in my pitying young fancy to have turned pale on their account poor wretches at last Joe's job was done and the ringing and roaring stopped as Joe got on his coat he mustered courage to propose that some of us should go down with the soldiers and see what came of the hunt Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Hubbell declined on the plea of a pipe and Lady Society but Mr. Wopsle said he would go Joe said he was agreeable and would take me if Mrs. Joe approved we never should have got leave to go I am sure but for Mrs. Joe's curiosity to know all about it and how it ended as it was she merely stipulated if you bring the boy back with his head blown to bits by a musket don't look to me to put it together again the sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies and parted for Mr. Pumblechook as from a comrade though I doubt if he were quite as fully sensible of that gentleman's merits under arid conditions as when something moist was going his men resumed their muskets and fell in Mr. Wopsle, Joe and I received strict charge to keep in the rear and to speak no word after we reached the marshes when we were all out in the raw air and were steadily moving towards our business I treasonably whispered to Joe I hope, Joe, we shan't find them and Joe whispered to me I'd give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip we were joined by no stragglers from the village for the weather was cold and threatening the way dreary the footing bad darkness coming on and the people had good fires indoors 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 took me on his back now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where the 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 here he had asked me if I was a deceiving imp and he had said I should be against him would he believe that I was both imp and hound and 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 in 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 and they're eating and looked timidly at us in the cattle their heads turned from the wind in sleet stared angrily as if they held us responsible for both annoyances but except these things and the shutter of the dying day and 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 but there had reached us 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 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 the words he spoke all the time a winter down banks and up banks over gates and splashing into dykes 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 than 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 two of his men ran in close upon him their pieces were cocked and leveled when we all ran in here are both men panted the sergeant struggling at the bottom of a ditch surrender you two and cunt found 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 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 I'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 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 Hulk says God it's gentlemen again through me murder him worth my while 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 looky 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 have 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 I found out let him make a tool of me a fresh 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 and you should have been safe to find him in my hold the other fugitive who was evidently an 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 did you say him pursued my convict do you see what a villain he is do you see those groveling and wandering eyes that's how he looked when we were tried together he never looked at me the other always working in working his dry lips and turning his eyes restlessly about him 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 anyone could see that he shook and that there broke out upon his lips curious white flakes like thin snow enough of this parsley said the sergeant light those torches as one of the soldiers who carried a basket and loo 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 having been more attentive the soldier with the basket soon got alight 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. Wopsill had been foregoing 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 dyke came with a miniature windmill on it and a muddy sluice gate when I looked round I could see the two 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 I could see nothing else but black darkness our lights warmed the air about us with their pitchy blaze and the two prisoners seemed rather to like that as they limped along in the midst of the muskets we could not go fast two or three times we had to halt while they rested after an hour or so of this travelling we came to a rough wooden hut in a landing-place there was a guard in the hut and they challenged and the sergeant answered then we went into the hut where there was a smell of tobacco and whitewash and a bright fire and a lamp and a stand of muskets and a drum and a low wooden bedstead and a laundry capable of holding about a dozen soldiers all at once three or four soldiers who lay upon it in their great coats were not much interested in us but just lifted their heads and took a sleepy stare and then lay down again the sergeant made some kind of report and some entry in a book and then the convict who I called the other convict was drafted off with his guard to go on board first my convict never looked at me except that once while we stood in the hut he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it or putting up his feet by turns upon the hob and looking thoughtfully at them as if he pitted them for their recent adventures suddenly he turned to the sergeant and remarked I wish to say something respecting this escape it may prevent some persons laying under suspicion a longer me you can say what you like return the sergeant standing coolly looking at him with his arms folded but you have no call to say it here you'll have opportunity enough to say about it and hear about it before it's done with you know oh I know but this is another point a separate matter a man can't starve at least I can't I took some vitals up at the village over yonder where the church stands almost out on the marshes you mean stole said the sergeant and I'll tell you where from from the blacksmiths hello said the sergeant staring at Joe hello Pip said Joe staring at me it was some broken vitals that's what it was and a dram of liquor and a pie have you happened to miss such an article hey blacksmith asked the sergeant confidentially my wife did at the very moment when you came in don't you know Pip stole said my convict turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner and without the least glance at me so you're the blacksmith are you then I'm sorry to say I've eat your pie God knows you're welcome to it as it was ever mine returned Joe with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe we don't know what you have done but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it poor miserable fellow creature what us Pip the something that I'd noticed before clicked in the man's throat again and he turned his back the boat had returned and his guard was ready so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough steaks and stones and saw him put into the boat which was rode by a crew of convicts like himself no one seemed surprised to see him or interested in seeing him or glad to see him or sorry to see him or spoke a word except that somebody in the boat growled as if to dogs give way you which was the signal for the dip of the oars by the light of the torches we saw the black hulk lying out a little way from the mud to the shore like a wicked Noah's ark cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains the prison ship seemed to my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners we saw the boat go alongside and we saw him taken up the side and disappear then the ends of the torches were flung hissing into the water and went out as if it were all over with him End of chapter 6 My State of Mind regarding the pilfering from which I have been so unexpectedly exonerated did not impel me to like disclosure, but I hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it. I did not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference to Mrs. Joe when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But I love Joe, perhaps for no better reason in those early days than because the dear fellow let me love him, and as to him my inner self was not so easily composed. It was much upon my mind, particularly when I first saw him looking about for his file, that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe's confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at night staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it I never afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair whisker without thinking that he was meditating on it. That if Joe knew it I never afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at yesterday's meat or pudding when it came on today's table, without thinking that he was debating whether I had been in the pantry. That if Joe knew it, and at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life, remarked that his beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he suspected tar in it would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a word I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this manner. Quite an untaught genius I made the discovery of the line of action for myself. As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison ship, Joe took me on his back again and carried me home. He must have had a tiresome journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked up, was in such a very bad temper that if the church had been thrown open it would probably have excommunicated the whole expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In his lay capacity he persisted in sitting down in the damp to such an insane extent that when his coat was taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers would have hanged him if it had been a capital offense. By that time I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little drunkard, having been newly set upon my feet, and through having been fast asleep, and through waking in the heat and lights and noise of tongues. As I came to myself, with the aid of a heavy thump between the shoulders and the restorative exclamation, Yeah! Was there ever such a boy as this? from my sister. I found Joe telling them about the convict's confession, and all the visitors suggesting different ways by which he had got into the pantry. Mr. Pumblechook made out, after carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bedding cut into strips. And as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive, and drove his own Shezkart over everybody, it was agreed that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle indeed widely cried out, No! with a feeble, malice-retired man. But as he had no theory, and no coat on, he was unanimously set at naught, not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out, which was not calculated to inspire confidence. This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as a slumberous offense to the company's eyesight, and assisted me up to bed with such a strong hand that I seemed to have fifty boots on, and to be dangling them all against the edges of the stairs. My state of mind, as I have described it, began before I was up in the morning and