Chương Chương 50 · THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE

. THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE

THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE

Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe

abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on

the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of

close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the

strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are

hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of

its inhabitants.

To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of

close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest

of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to

occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the

shops; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at

the salesman’s door, and stream from the house-parapet and windows.

Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class,

ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the

raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along,

assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which

branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of

ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks

of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving, at length, in

streets remoter and less-frequented than those through which he has

passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the

pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys

half crushed half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron

bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign

of desolation and neglect.

In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark,

stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet

deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill

Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch. It is a creek

or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled at high water by

opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it took its old name.

At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges

thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses

on either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets,

pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up;

and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses

themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before

him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses,

with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken

and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is

never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would

seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter;

wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening

to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying

foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome

indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of

Folly Ditch.

In Jacob’s Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are

crumbling down; the windows are windows no more; the doors are falling

into the streets; the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke.

Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon

it, it was a thriving place; but now it is a desolate island indeed.

The houses have no owners; they are broken open, and entered upon by

those who have the courage; and there they live, and there they die.

They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced

to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island.

In an upper room of one of these houses—a detached house of fair size,

ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door and window: of

which house the back commanded the ditch in manner already

described—there were assembled three men, who, regarding each other

every now and then with looks expressive of perplexity and expectation,

sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence. One of these was Toby

Crackit, another Mr. Chitling, and the third a robber of fifty years,

whose nose had been almost beaten in, in some old scuffle, and whose

face bore a frightful scar which might probably be traced to the same

occasion. This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags.

“I wish,” said Toby turning to Mr. Chitling, “that you had picked out

some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not come

here, my fine feller.”

“Why didn’t you, blunder-head!” said Kags.

“Well, I thought you’d have been a little more glad to see me than

this,” replied Mr. Chitling, with a melancholy air.

“Why, look’e, young gentleman,” said Toby, “when a man keeps himself so

very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over

his head with nobody a prying and smelling about it, it’s rather a

startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman

(however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with

at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.”

“Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping

with him, that’s arrived sooner than was expected from foreign parts,

and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return,”

added Mr. Kags.

There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon

as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care

swagger, turned to Chitling and said,

“When was Fagin took then?”

“Just at dinner-time—two o’clock this afternoon. Charley and I made our

lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt,

head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out

at the top, and so they took him too.”

“And Bet?”

“Poor Bet! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,” replied

Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, “and went off mad,

screaming and raving, and beating her head against the boards; so they

put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital—and there she

is.”

“Wot’s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.

“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here

soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the

people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I

went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”

“This is a smash,” observed Toby, biting his lips. “There’s more than

one will go with this.”

“The sessions are on,” said Kags: “if they get the inquest over, and

Bolter turns King’s evidence: as of course he will, from what he’s said

already: they can prove Fagin an accessory before the fact, and get the

trial on on Friday, and he’ll swing in six days from this, by G—!”

“You should have heard the people groan,” said Chitling; “the officers

fought like devils, or they’d have torn him away. He was down once, but

they made a ring round him, and fought their way along. You should have

seen how he looked about him, all muddy and bleeding, and clung to them

as if they were his dearest friends. I can see ’em now, not able to

stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and draggin him along

amongst ’em; I can see the people jumping up, one behind another, and

snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon

his hair and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked

themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore

they’d tear his heart out!”

The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his

ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro,

like one distracted.

While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with their

eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon the stairs,

and Sikes’s dog bounded into the room. They ran to the window,

downstairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped in at an open

window; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his master to be

seen.

“What’s the meaning of this?” said Toby when they had returned. “He

can’t be coming here. I—I—hope not.”

“If he was coming here, he’d have come with the dog,” said Kags,

stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor.

“Here! Give us some water for him; he has run himself faint.”

“He’s drunk it all up, every drop,” said Chitling after watching the

dog some time in silence. “Covered with mud—lame—half blind—he must

have come a long way.”

“Where can he have come from!” exclaimed Toby. “He’s been to the other

kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers come on here,

where he’s been many a time and often. But where can he have come from

first, and how comes he here alone without the other!”

“He”—(none of them called the murderer by his old name)—“He can’t have

made away with himself. What do you think?” said Chitling.

Toby shook his head.

“If he had,” said Kags, “the dog ’ud want to lead us away to where he

did it. No. I think he’s got out of the country, and left the dog

behind. He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn’t be so

easy.”

This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the

right; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep,

without more notice from anybody.

It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted and

placed upon the table. The terrible events of the last two days had

made a deep impression on all three, increased by the danger and

uncertainty of their own position. They drew their chairs closer

together, starting at every sound. They spoke little, and that in

whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of the

murdered woman lay in the next room.

They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried

knocking at the door below.

“Young Bates,” said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he

felt himself.

The knocking came again. No, it wasn’t he. He never knocked like that.

Crackit went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his head.

There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough.

The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the

door.

“We must let him in,” he said, taking up the candle.

“Isn’t there any help for it?” asked the other man in a hoarse voice.

“None. He _must_ come in.”

“Don’t leave us in the dark,” said Kags, taking down a candle from the

chimney-piece, and lighting it, with such a trembling hand that the

knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.

Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the

lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief, and another tied over

his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched face, sunken

eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days’ growth, wasted flesh, short

thick breath; it was the very ghost of Sikes.

He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room,

but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance

over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall—as close as it

would go—and ground it against it—and sat down.

Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in

silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly

averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started.

They seemed never to have heard its tones before.

“How came that dog here?” he asked.

“Alone. Three hours ago.”

“Tonight’s paper says that Fagin’s took. Is it true, or a lie?”

“True.”

They were silent again.

“Damn you all!” said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead. “Have

you nothing to say to me?”

There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.

“You that keep this house,” said Sikes, turning his face to Crackit,

“do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?”

“You may stop here, if you think it safe,” returned the person

addressed, after some hesitation.

Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him: rather trying to

turn his head than actually doing it: and said, “Is—it—the body—is it

buried?”

They shook their heads.

“Why isn’t it!” he retorted with the same glance behind him. “Wot do

they keep such ugly things above the ground for?—Who’s that knocking?”

Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that

there was nothing to fear; and directly came back with Charley Bates

behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy

entered the room he encountered his figure.

“Toby,” said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes towards

him, “why didn’t you tell me this, downstairs?”

There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the

three, that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad.

Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake hands with

him.

“Let me go into some other room,” said the boy, retreating still

farther.

“Charley!” said Sikes, stepping forward. “Don’t you—don’t you know me?”

“Don’t come nearer me,” answered the boy, still retreating, and

looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer’s face. “You

monster!”

The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but Sikes’s

eyes sunk gradually to the ground.

“Witness you three,” cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and

becoming more and more excited as he spoke. “Witness you three—I’m not

afraid of him—if they come here after him, I’ll give him up; I will. I

tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he

dares, but if I am here I’ll give him up. I’d give him up if he was to

be boiled alive. Murder! Help! If there’s the pluck of a man among you

three, you’ll help me. Murder! Help! Down with him!”

Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent

gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the

strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of

his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.

The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no

interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together; the

former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his

hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer’s breast,

and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.

The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him down,

and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back with a

look of alarm, and pointed to the window. There were lights gleaming

below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the tramp of hurried

footsteps—endless they seemed in number—crossing the nearest wooden

bridge. One man on horseback seemed to be among the crowd; for there

was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of

lights increased; the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then,

came a loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a

multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.

“Help!” shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. “He’s here!

Break down the door!”

“In the King’s name,” cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry

arose again, but louder.

“Break down the door!” screamed the boy. “I tell you they’ll never open

it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!”

Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower

window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the

crowd; giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of

its immense extent.

“Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching

Hell-babe,” cried Sikes fiercely; running to and fro, and dragging the

boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. “That door. Quick!” He

flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. “Is the downstairs door

fast?”

“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two

men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.

“The panels—are they strong?”

“Lined with sheet-iron.”

“And the windows too?”

“Yes, and the windows.”

“Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and

menacing the crowd. “Do your worst! I’ll cheat you yet!”

Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could

exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to those who were

nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to

shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on

horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle, and bursting

through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried, beneath the

window, in a voice that rose above all others, “Twenty guineas to the

man who brings a ladder!”

The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called

for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to and fro

as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent

their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward

with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those

below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout

and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness

beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind: and joined from

time to time in one loud furious roar.

“The tide,” cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and

shut the faces out, “the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a

long rope. They’re all in front. I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and

clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders

and kill myself.”

The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the

murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up

to the house-top.

All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up,

except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that

was too small even for the passage of his body. But, from this

aperture, he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the

back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top by

the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in

front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in

an unbroken stream.

He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose,

so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty

to open it from the inside; and creeping over the tiles, looked over

the low parapet.

The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.

The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his

motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived it

and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration to

which all their previous shouting had been whispers. Again and again it

rose. Those who were at too great a distance to know its meaning, took

up the sound; it echoed and re-echoed; it seemed as though the whole

city had poured its population out to curse him.

On pressed the people from the front—on, on, on, in a strong struggling

current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring torch to lighten

them up, and show them out in all their wrath and passion. The houses

on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes

were thrown up, or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces

in every window; cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every

house-top. Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent

beneath the weight of the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on to

find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an

instant see the wretch.

“They have him now,” cried a man on the nearest bridge. “Hurrah!”

The crowd grew light with uncovered heads; and again the shout uprose.

“I will give fifty pounds,” cried an old gentleman from the same

quarter, “to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here, till he

come to ask me for it.”

There was another roar. At this moment the word was passed among the

crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he who had first

called for the ladder had mounted into the room. The stream abruptly

turned, as this intelligence ran from mouth to mouth; and the people at

the windows, seeing those upon the bridges pouring back, quitted their

stations, and running into the street, joined the concourse that now

thronged pell-mell to the spot they had left: each man crushing and

striving with his neighbor, and all panting with impatience to get near

the door, and look upon the criminal as the officers brought him out.

The cries and shrieks of those who were pressed almost to suffocation,

or trampled down and trodden under foot in the confusion, were

dreadful; the narrow ways were completely blocked up; and at this time,

between the rush of some to regain the space in front of the house, and

the unavailing struggles of others to extricate themselves from the

mass, the immediate attention was distracted from the murderer,

although the universal eagerness for his capture was, if possible,

increased.

The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of the

crowd, and the impossibility of escape; but seeing this sudden change

with no less rapidity than it had occurred, he sprang upon his feet,

determined to make one last effort for his life by dropping into the

ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled, endeavouring to creep away in

the darkness and confusion.

Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by the noise within

the house which announced that an entrance had really been effected, he

set his foot against the stack of chimneys, fastened one end of the

rope tightly and firmly round it, and with the other made a strong

running noose by the aid of his hands and teeth almost in a second. He

could let himself down by the cord to within a less distance of the

ground than his own height, and had his knife ready in his hand to cut

it then and drop.

At the very instant when he brought the loop over his head previous to

slipping it beneath his arm-pits, and when the old gentleman

before-mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railing of the bridge

as to resist the force of the crowd, and retain his position) earnestly

warned those about him that the man was about to lower himself down—at

that very instant the murderer, looking behind him on the roof, threw

his arms above his head, and uttered a yell of terror.

“The eyes again!” he cried in an unearthly screech.

Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled

over the parapet. The noose was on his neck. It ran up with his weight,

tight as a bow-string, and swift as the arrow it speeds. He fell for

five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of

the limbs; and there he hung, with the open knife clenched in his

stiffening hand.

The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely. The

murderer swung lifeless against the wall; and the boy, thrusting aside

the dangling body which obscured his view, called to the people to come

and take him out, for God’s sake.

A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and forwards on

the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting himself for a spring,

jumped for the dead man’s shoulders. Missing his aim, he fell into the

ditch, turning completely over as he went; and striking his head

against a stone, dashed out his brains.