"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 blame to me and not praise, if I had.

People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob,

and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and 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 up

stairs in the dark, with my head tingling,--from Mrs. Joe's thimble

having 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 in

mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was

in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal

terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had

no hope of deliverance through 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 down stairs; every board upon the way, and

every crack in 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-liquorice-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 earthen ware 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.




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