Great Expectations

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 dike

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 fire 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.