Great Expectations

It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the enclosed

lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their dark line there was

a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to hold the red large moon.

In a few minutes she had ascended out of that clear field, in among the

piled mountains of cloud.

There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dismal. A

stranger would have found them insupportable, and even to me they were

so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go back. But I knew

them well, and could have found my way on a far darker night, and had

no excuse for returning, being there. So, having come there against my

inclination, I went on against it.

The direction that I took was not that in which my old home lay, nor

that in which we had pursued the convicts. My back was turned towards

the distant Hulks as I walked on, and, though I could see the old lights

away on the spits of sand, I saw them over my shoulder. I knew the

limekiln as well as I knew the old Battery, but they were miles apart;

so that, if a light had been burning at each point that night, there

would have been a long strip of the blank horizon between the two bright

specks.

At first, I had to shut some gates after me, and now and then to stand

still while the cattle that were lying in the banked-up pathway arose

and blundered down among the grass and reeds. But after a little while I

seemed to have the whole flats to myself.

It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. The lime was

burning with a sluggish stifling smell, but the fires were made up and

left, and no workmen were visible. Hard by was a small stone-quarry. It

lay directly in my way, and had been worked that day, as I saw by the

tools and barrows that were lying about.

Coming up again to the marsh level out of this excavation,--for the rude

path lay through it,--I saw a light in the old sluice-house. I quickened

my pace, and knocked at the door with my hand. Waiting for some reply,

I looked about me, noticing how the sluice was abandoned and broken, and

how the house--of wood with a tiled roof--would not be proof against the

weather much longer, if it were so even now, and how the mud and ooze

were coated with lime, and how the choking vapor of the kiln crept in a

ghostly way towards me. Still there was no answer, and I knocked again.

No answer still, and I tried the latch.