Chapter III
It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the
outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all
night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the
damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of
spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On
every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick,
that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village--a
direction which they never accepted, for they never came there--was
invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up
at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a
phantom devoting me to the Hulks.
The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that
instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me.
This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and
banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly
as could be, "A boy with Somebody's else's pork pie! Stop him!" The
cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes,
and steaming out of their nostrils, "Halloa, young thief!" One black
ox, with a white cravat on,--who even had to my awakened conscience
something of a clerical air,--fixed me so obstinately with his eyes,
and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved
round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't
for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of
smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and
a flourish of his tail.
All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I
went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted, as
the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I knew
my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there on a
Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when
I was 'prentice to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks there!
However, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to
the right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, on the
bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide
out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a
ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled
up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me.
His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and was nodding
forward, heavy with sleep.
I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast,
in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on
the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but
another man!
And yet this man was dressed in coarse gray, too, and had a great iron
on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was everything that
the other man was; except that he had not the same face, and had a flat
broad-brimmed low-crowned felt hat on. All this I saw in a moment, for
I had only a moment to see it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at
me,--it was a round weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself
down, for it made him stumble,--and then he ran into the mist, stumbling
twice as he went, and I lost him.
"It's the young man!" I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified
him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had
known where it was.
I was soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right
Man,--hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all
night left off hugging and limping,--waiting for me. He was awfully
cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face
and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry too, that when
I handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass, it occurred to
me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my bundle. He did
not turn me upside down this time to get at what I had, but left me
right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my pockets.
"What's in the bottle, boy?" said he.
"Brandy," said I.
He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious
manner,--more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent
hurry, than a man who was eating it,--but he left off to take some of
the liquor. He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite
as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth,
without biting it off.
"I think you have got the ague," said I.
"I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he.
"It's bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on the meshes,
and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too."
"I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he. "I'd do
that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is
over there, directly afterwards. I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet
you."
He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all
at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round
us, and often stopping--even stopping his jaws--to listen. Some real or
fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the
marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly,--
"You're not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?"
"No, sir! No!"
"Nor giv' no one the office to follow you?"
"No!"
"Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound
indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched
warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint
is!"
Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock,
and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over his
eyes.
Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down
upon the pie, I made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it."
"Did you speak?"
"I said I was glad you enjoyed it."
"Thankee, my boy. I do."
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now
noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and the
man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He
swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast;
and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought
there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie
away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate
it comfortably I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without
making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars
he was very like the dog.
"I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him," said I, timidly; after
a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making
the remark. "There's no more to be got where that came from." It was the
certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.
"Leave any for him? Who's him?" said my friend, stopping in his
crunching of pie-crust.
"The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you."
"Oh ah!" he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. "Him? Yes, yes!
He don't want no wittles."
"I thought he looked as if he did," said I.
The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and
the greatest surprise.
"Looked? When?"
"Just now."
"Where?"
"Yonder," said I, pointing; "over there, where I found him nodding
asleep, and thought it was you."
He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his
first idea about cutting my throat had revived.
"Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat," I explained, trembling;
"and--and"--I was very anxious to put this delicately--"and with--the
same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn't you hear the cannon
last night?"
"Then there was firing!" he said to himself.
"I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that," I returned, "for
we heard it up at home, and that's farther away, and we were shut in
besides."
"Why, see now!" said he. "When a man's alone on these flats, with a
light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears
nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees
the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried
afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself
challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders 'Make
ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!' and is laid hands on--and
there's nothin'! Why, if I see one pursuing party last night--coming up
in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, tramp--I see a hundred. And as to
firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad
day,--But this man"; he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my
being there; "did you notice anything in him?"
"He had a badly bruised face," said I, recalling what I hardly knew I
knew.
"Not here?" exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly, with
the flat of his hand.
"Yes, there!"
"Where is he?" He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of
his gray jacket. "Show me the way he went. I'll pull him down, like a
bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file,
boy."
I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man,
and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet
grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding
his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he
handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file. I
was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into
this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away
from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so
I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw
of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his
fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his leg. The last
I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still
going.
