Great Expectations | Page 5

and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no
matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate.
Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in
comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I
speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at
his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that
young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may
draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young
man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that
young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it
wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"
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.










Chapter II
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had
established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors because she had brought me
up "by hand." Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and
knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon
her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up
by hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she
must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a