第15章

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, as having been more attentive.

The soldier with the basket soon got a light, 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 Wopsle had been for going 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 other lights coming in after us. The torches we carried, dropped great blotches of the 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, because of their lameness;and they were so spent, that 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 and 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, like an overgrown mangle without the machinery, 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 whom I call 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 pitied 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 alonger me.'

`You can say what you like,' returned 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.'

`I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man can't starve;at least I can't. I took some wittles, up at the willage over yonder - where the church stands a'most out on the marshes.'

`You mean stole,' said the sergeant.

`And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's.'

`Halloa!' said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

`Halloa, Pip!' said Joe, staring at me.

`It was some broken wittles - that's what it was - and a dram of liquor, and a pie.'

`Have you happened to miss such an articles as a pie, blacksmith?' asked the sergeant, confidentially.

`My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know, Pip?'

`So,' 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? Than I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie.'

`God knows you're welcome to it - so far 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-creatur. - Would us, Pip?'

The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man's throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed 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 torches, we was the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in 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.