Great Expectations

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken

bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in

the morning.

"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember

that young man, and you get home!"

"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.

"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I

wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his

arms,--clasping himself, as if to hold himself together,--and limped

towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the

nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked

in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people,

stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his

ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose

legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I

saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of

my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on

again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking

his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the

marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or

the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped

to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not

nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long

angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the

river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the

prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon

by which the sailors steered,--like an unhooped cask upon a pole,--an

ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains

hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on

towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come

down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible

turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to

gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all

round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now

I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.