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Values today we'll be continuing great expectations by Charles Dickens chapter 54 it was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold, when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade.

We had our peacoats with us, and I took a bag of all my worldly possessions.

I took no more than the few necessaries that filled the bag.

Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might return were questions utterly unknown to me.

Nor did I vex my mind with them, for it was wholly set on Provis'safety.

I only wondered for the passing moment as I stopped at the door and looked back under what altered circumstances I should next see those rooms, if ever.

We loitered down the temple stairs and stood loitering there, as if we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all.

Of course I had taken care that the boat should be ready and everything in order.

After a little show of indecision, which there were none to see but the two or three amphibious creatures belonging to our temple stairs, we went on board and cast off, Herbert in the bow, eyes steering.

It was then about high water.

30.

Our plan was this the tide beginning to run down at nine, and being with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it had turned and row against it until dark.

We should then be well in those long reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, where the river is broad and solitary, where the waterside inhabitants are very few, and where lone public houses are scattered here and there, of which we could choose one for a resting place.

There we meant to lie by all night.

The steamer for Hamburg and the steamer for Rottendam would start from London at about nine on Thursday morning.

We should know at what time to expect them according to where we were, and would hail the first, so that if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we should have another chance.

We knew the distinguishing marks of each vessel.

The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the purpose, was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realize the condition in which I'd been a few hours before.

The crisp air, the sunlight, the movement on the river, and the moving river itself, the road that ran with us, seeming to sympathize with us, animate us, and encourage us on, freshened me with new hope.

I felt mortified to be of so little use in the boat, but there were few better oarsmen than my two friends, and they rode with a steady stroke that was to last all day.

At that time the steam traffic on the thames was far below its present extent, and Waterman's boats were far more numerous, of barges, sailing colliers and coasting traders.

There were perhaps as many as now, but of steamships great and small, not a tither, a 20th part, so many early as it was, there were plenty of scholars going here and there that morning, and plenty of barges dropping down with the tide.

The navigation of the river between bridges and an open boat was much easier and commoner matter in those days than it is in these, and we went ahead among many skiffs and waries.

Briskly.

Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate market, with its oyster boats and Dutchmen, and the white Tower and the trader's gate.

And we were in among the tiers of shipping.

Here were the leith, Aberdeen, and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods, and looking immensely high out of the water as we passed alongside.

Here were colliers by the score and score, with the coal whippers plunging off stages on deck as counterweights to measure of coal swinging up, which were then rattled over the side into barges.

Here at her moorings was tomorrow's steamer for Rotterdam, of which we took good notice, and here tomorrow's for Hamburg, under whose bow sprit we crossed.

And now I, sitting in the stern, could see with a faster beating heart mill pond bank and mill pond stairs.

Is he there yet?

Said Herbert.

Not yet.

Right he was not to come down till he saw us.

Can you see a signal?

Not well from here, but I think I see it now.

I see him pull both easy, Herbert.

Oars.

We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on board, and we were off again.

He had a boat cloak with him, and a black canvas bag, and he looked as like a river pilot as my heart could have wished.

Dear boy, he said, putting his arm.

On my shoulder as he took his.

Seat, faithful, dear boy, well done.

Thanky, thanky.

Again among the tears of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty chain cables, frayed hemp and hausers, and bobbing buoys, sinking for the moment floating, broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood, and shaving, cleaving, floating scum of coal, in and out under the figurehead of the john of Sunderland, making a speech to the winds, as it's done by many johns in the Betsy of Yarmouth, with a firm formality of bosom, and her knobby eyes staring two inches out of her head, in and out, hammers going in shipbuilders'yards saws going at timber clashing at engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen in and out, out at last upon the clearer river, where the ship's boys might take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them over the side, and where the festoon sails might fly out to the wind at the stairs where we had taken him abroad and ever since I had looked warily for any token of our being suspected, I had seen none.

We certainly had not been, and at that time, as certainly we were not either attended or followed by any boat.

If we had been waited on by any boat, I should have run into shore and have obliged her to go on, or to make her purpose evident.

But we held our own without any appearance of molestation.

He had his boat cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural part of the scene.

It was remarkable, but perhaps the wretched life he had led accounted for it, and he was the least anxious of any of us.

He was not indifferent for he told me that he hoped to live to see his gentleman, one of the best gentlemen in a foreign country.

He was not disposed to be passive or resigned, as I understood it.

But he had no notion of meeting danger halfway.

When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before he troubled himself.

If you know, dear boy, he said to me, what it is to sit here longer, my dear boy, and have my smoke otter having been day by day betwixt four walls, you'd envy me, but you don't know what it is.

I think I know the delights of freedom, I answered.

Ah, said he, shaking his head gravely.

But you don't know it equal to me.

You must have been under lock and key, dear boy, to know it equal to me.

But I ain't going to be low.

It occurred to me as inconsistent that for any mastering idea he should have endangered his freedom and even his life, that I reflected that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart from all the habit of his existence to be to him what it would be to another man.

I was not far out since he said, after smoking a little.

You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, the other side of the world, I was always a look into this side, and had come flat to be here for all I was a growing rich.

Everybody knowed Magwitch, and Magwitch could come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody's head would be troubled about him.

They ain't so easy concerning me here, dear boy.

Wouldn't be least wise if they knowed where I was.

If all goes well, said I, you'll be perfectly free and safe again within a few hours.

Well, he returned, drawing a long breath.

I hope so and think so.

He dipped his hand into the water over the boat's gunwell, and said, smiling with that softened air upon him, which was not new to me, I suppose.

I think so, dear boy.

We'd be puzzled to be more quiet and easygoing than we are at present, but it's a flowing so often pleasant through the water, perhaps 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 catch his hold of.

Nor yet we can't go 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 undisturbable expression of face and satis, 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 my 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 mudy 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 boughs 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 dent of having occasionally let her drive with the tide for a minute or two and 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 tide marks 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 rode and rode and rode 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 that's deepening into black.

And there was a 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 goal.

As the night was fast falling, and as the moon being past the fool, would not rise early, we held a little counsel, 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, five dull miles.

It was very cold.

Nicolier, 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 from the sky, as the oars and 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 ores worked in the thouls.

At length we described a light in the roof, and presently afterwards ran alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been picked up hard by leaving the rust 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 is as slimy and smeary as if he had been low watermarked 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 is 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 she 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 seamen washed ashore, asked me if we had seen a fort ort galley going up with the tide.

When I told him no, he said she must have gone down then, and yet she took up two when she left there.

They must have thought better on for.

Some reason or other, said the jack, and gone down a forward 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 have been glad to pies in 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 custom 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, facilitating weekly.

Done with their buttons.

Returned the jack, chucked him overboard, smothered him, sewed him to come up small salad.

Done with their buttons.

Don't be cheeky, Jack, remonstrated the landlord in a melancholy and pathetic way.

A custom's officer knows what to do.

With his buttons, said the jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt.

When they come betwixt him in 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 custom.

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 forward 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 province 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 counsel.

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 our 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 charged lay fast asleep.

I looked out of the window.

I commanded the causeway where he 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 struck across the marsh in the direction of the nor.

My first impulse was to call up Herbert and show him the two men going away.

But reflecting before I got into his room, which was at the back of the house, and adjoined mine that he and startop had had a harder day than I, and were fatigued, I forbore going back to my window.

I could see the two men moving over the marsh in that light.

However, I soon lost them, and, feeling very cold, lay down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again.

We were up early, and we walked to and fro all four together.

Before breakfast I deemed it right to recount what I had seen.

Again.

Our charge was the least anxious of the party.

It was very likely that the men belonged to the custom house, he said quietly, and that they had no thought of us.

I tried to persuade myself that it was so, as indeed it might easily be.

However, I proposed that he and I should walk away together to a distant point we could see, and that the boat should take us aboard there, or as near there as might prove feasible.

At about noon, this being considered a good precaution.

Soon after breakfast he and I set forth without saying anything.

At the tavern he smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap me on the shoulder.

One would have supposed that it was I who was in danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me.

We spoke very little as we approached the point.

I begged him to remain in a sheltered place while I went on to reconnaiture, for it was towards it that the men had passed in the night.

He complied, and I went on alone.

There was no boat off the point, nor any boat drawn up anywhere near it, nor were there any signs of the men having embarked there.

But to be sure, the tide was high, and there might have been some footprints underwater.

When he looked out from his shelter in the distance and saw that, I waved my hat to him to come up.

He rejoined me, and there we waited, sometimes lying on the bank, wrapped in our coats, and sometimes moving about to warm ourselves, until we saw our boat coming round.

We got aboard easily and rode out into the track of the steamer.

By that time it wanted but ten minutes of 01:00, and we began to look out for her smoke.

But it was 01:30 before we saw her smoke, and soon afterwards we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer.

As they were coming on at full speed.

We got the two bags ready, and took that opportunity of saying goodbye to Herbert and startop.

We had all shaken hands cordially, and neither Herbert's eyes nor mine were quite dry when I saw a forward galley shoot out from under the bank, but a little way ahead of us and row out into the same track.

A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer, smoke by reason of the bend and wind of the river, but now she was visible, coming head on.

I called to Herbert and startop to keep before the tide that she might see us lying by for her, and I adjured provice to sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak.

He answered cheerfully, trust me, dear boy.

And sat like a statue.

Meantime the galley, which was very skillfully handled, had crossed us, letting us come up with her, and fallen alongside, leaving just room enough for the play of the oars.

She kept alongside, drifting when we drifted and pulling a stroke or two when we pulled.

Of the two sitters, one held the rudder lines and looked at us attentively, as did all the rowers.

The other sitter was wrapped up much as Provis was, and seemed to shrink and whisper some instruction to the steer as he looked at us.

Not a word was spoken in either boat.

Star top could make out after a few minutes which steamer was first, and gave me the word hamburg in a low voice as we sat face to face.

She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her petals grew louder and louder.

I felt as if her shadow were absolutely upon us.

When the galley hailed us, I answered, you have a return to transport there, said the man who held the lines.

That's the man wrapped in the cloak.

His name is Abel Magwitch.

Otherwise, Provis, I apprehend that man and call upon him to surrender and you to assist.

At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his crew, he ran the galley abroad of us.

They had pulled one sudden stroke ahead, had got their oars in, had run authority, and were holding on to our gunwell before we knew what they were doing.

This caused great confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them calling to us and heard the order given to stop the paddles and heard them stop, but felt their driving down upon us irresistibly.

In the same moment, I saw the steersman of the galley lay his hand on his prisoner's shoulder and saw that both boats were swinging round with the force of the tide, and saw that all hands on board the steamer were running forward quite frantically.

Still, in the same moment, I saw the prisoner start up, lean across his captor, and pull the cloak from the neck of the shrinking sitter in the galley.

Still in the same moment, I saw that the face disclosed was the face of the other convict of long ago.

Still, in the same moment, I saw the face tilt backward with a white terror on it that I shall never forget.

And heard a great cry on board the steamer.

And a loud splash in the water.

And felt the boat sink from under me.

It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a thousand millwars and a thousand flashes of light.

That instant passed.

I was taken on board the galley.

Herbert was there, and startop was there.

But our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone.

What with the cries aboard the steamer and the furious blowing off of her steam and her driving on and our driving on.

I could not at first distinguish sky from water or shore from shore.

But the crew of the galley rided her with great speed.

And pulling certain swift, strong strokes ahead, lay upon their oars.

Every man looking silently and eagerly at the water as stern.

Presently a dark object was seen in it.

Bearing towards us on the tide.

No man spoke, but the steersman held up his hand.

And all softly backed water.

And kept the boat straight and true before it.

As it came nearer, I saw it to be magwitch swimming, but not swimming freely.

He was taken on board and instantly manacled at the wrists and ankles.

McGalli was kept steady, and the silent, eager lookout at the water was resumed.

But the Rotterdam steamer now came up.

And apparently not understanding what had happened, came on its speed.

By the time she had been hailed and stopped, both steamers were drifting away from us.

And we were rising and falling in a troubled wake of water.

The lookout was kept long after all, was still again, and the two steamers were gone.

But everybody knew that it was hopeless.

Now.

At length we gave it up and pulled under the shore towards the tavern we had lately left.

Where we were received with no little surprise.

Here I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch province no longer.

Who had received some very severe injury in the chest.

And a deep cut in the head.

He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel of the steamer.

And to have been struck on the head and rising.

The injury to his chest, which rendered his breathing extremely painful, he thought he had received against the side of the galley.

He added that he did not pretend to say what he might or might not have done to compisin.

But that in the moment of his laying his hand on his cloak to identify him.

That villain had staggered up and staggered back.

And they had both gone overboard together.

When the sudden wrenching of him, Magwitch out of our boat.

And the endeavor of his captor to keep him in it had capsized us.

He told me in a whisper that they had gone down fiercely locked in each other's arms.

And that there had been a struggle underwater.

And that he had disengaged himself, struck out, and swum away.

I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he thus told me.

The officer who steered the galley gave the same account of their going overboard.

When I asked this officer's permission to change the prisoner's wet clothes.

By purchasing any spare garments I could get at the public house, he gave it readily, merely observing that he must take charge of everything his prisoner had about him.

So the pocketbook which had once been in my hands.

Passed into the officers.

He further gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to London.

But declined to accord that grace to my two friends.

The jacket.

The ship was instructed where the drowned man had gone down.

And undertook to search for the body in the places where it was likeliest to come ashore.

His interest in its recovery seemed to me to be much heightened.

When he heard that it had stockings on.

Probably it took about a dozen drowned men to fit him out completely.

And that may have been the reason why the different articles of his dress were in various stages of decay.

We remained at the public house until the tide turned, and then Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board.

Herbert and Startop were to get to London by land as soon as they could.

We had a doleful parting, and when I took my place by Magwitch's side, I felt that was my place henceforth while he lived.

For now, my repugnance to him had all but melted away.

And in the hunted, wounded, shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor.

And who had felt affectionately, gratefully and generously towards me with great constancy through a series of years, only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe.

His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night drew on, and often he could not repress a groan.

I tried to rest him on the arm I could use in any easy position.

But it was dreadful to think that I could not be sorry at heart for his being badly hurt.

Since it was unquestionably best that he should die.

That there were still living people enough.

Who were able and willing to identify him.

I could not doubt that he would be leniently treated.

I could not hope.

He who had been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his arrest.

As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left behind us, and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back, I told him how grieved I was to think that he had come home for my sake.

Dear boy, he answered, I'm quite content to take my chance.

I've seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me.

No, I had thought about that.

What?

We had been there side by side.

No, apart from any inclinations of my own, I understood Wimick's hint.

Now I foresaw that being convicted, his possessions would be forfeited to the crown.

Look ye here, dear boy, said he, it's best as a gentleman should not be knowed to belong to me now.

Only come to see me as if you come by chance along a whimic sit where I can see you when I'm swore to for the last of many times, and I don't ask no more.

I will never stir from your side, said I, when I am suffered to be near you, please God, I will be as true to you as you have been to me.

I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face away as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old sound in his throat, softened now, like all the rest of him, it was a good thing that he had touched this point, for it put into my mind what I might not otherwise have thought of until too late, that he'd never know how his hopes of enriching me had perished.

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of great expectations.

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Taking chapter by chapter, one at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for word, line by line, one bite at a time, close.