Beyond town, we found a heavy
mist out, and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur,
quite out of the lamp's usual place apparently, and its rays looked
solid substance on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how
that the mist rose with a change of wind from a certain quarter of
our marshes, when we came upon a man, slouching under the lee of
the turnpike house.
"Halloa!" we said, stopping. "Orlick, there?"
"Ah!" he answered, slouching out. "I was standing by, a minute, on
the chance of company."
"You are late," I remarked.
Orlick not unnaturally answered, "Well? And you're late."
"We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,
"we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening."
Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we
all went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been
spending his half-holiday up and down town?
"Yes," said he, "all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn't see
you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By-the-bye, the
guns is going again."
"At the Hulks?" said I.
"Ay! There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have
been going since dark, about. You'll hear one presently."
In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the
wellremembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and
heavily rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it
were pursuing and threatening the fugitives.
"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be puzzled
how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night."
The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in
silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening's
tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell.
Orlick, with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side.
It was very dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along.
Now and then, the sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again,
and again rolled sulkily along the course of the river. I kept
myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at
Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, and in the
greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled, "Beat it
out, beat it out - Old Clem! With a clink for the stout - Old
Clem!" I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk.
Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it,
took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to
find - it being eleven o'clock - in a state of commotion, with the
door wide open, and unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up
and put down, scattered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was
the matter (surmising that a convict had been taken), but came
running out in a great hurry.
"There's something wrong," said he, without stopping, "up at your
place, Pip. Run all!"
"What is it?" I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my
side.
"I can't quite understand. The house seems to have been violently
entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody
has been attacked and hurt."
We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made
no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the
whole village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon,
and there was Joe, and there was a group of women, all on the floor
in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back
when they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister - lying
without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been
knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by
some unknown hand when her face was turned towards the fire -
destined never to be on the Rampage again, while she was the wife
of Joe.
Chapter 16
With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to
believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my
sister, or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known
to be under obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of
suspicion than any one else.