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

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