Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (speed reading book TXT) 📕

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 while I 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 the 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 ague,” 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 afore 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

round us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen.

Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing

of 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 giv’ 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

warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched

warmint is!”

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a

clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough

sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled

down upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”

“Did you speak?”

“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”

“Thankee, 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,

as if 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 during which 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.

“Leave 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!” he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes,

yes! He don’t want no wittles.”

“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the 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—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 of cold and want, he

hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling.

Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the

torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number

called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets,

hears the orders ‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and

is laid hands on—and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing

party last night—coming up in order, Damn ‘em, with their tramp,

tramp—I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist

shake with the cannon, arter it was 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, recalling what I hardly knew

I knew.

“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly,

with the flat of his hand.

“Yes, there!”

“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the

breast of his gray 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 mist 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 keeping away from 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

imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I

stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going.