Perils of Certain English Prisoners

The Perils of Certain English
Prisoners, by

Charles Dickens
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Title: The Perils of Certain English Prisoners
Author: Charles Dickens
Release Date: April 3, 2005 [eBook #1406]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PERILS
OF CERTAIN ENGLISH PRISONERS***

Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories"
edition by David Price, email [email protected]

THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH PRISONERS



CHAPTER I
--THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE

It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
forty-four, that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the
honour to be a private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the
bulwarks of the armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South
American waters off the Mosquito shore.
My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such
christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name
given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was Gilbert. She
is certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a foundling child,
picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my
christian-name to be Gill. It is true that I was called Gills when
employed at Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and Maidstone to
frighten birds; but that had nothing to do with the Baptism wherein I
was made, &c., and wherein a number of things were promised for me
by somebody, who let me alone ever afterwards as to performing any of
them, and who, I consider, must have been the Beadle. Such name of
Gills was entirely owing to my cheeks, or gills, which at that time of
my life were of a raspy description.
My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly in
her old way and waving the feather of her pen at me. That action on her
part, calls to my mind as I look at her hand with the rings on it--Well! I
won't! To be sure it will come in, in its own place. But it's always
strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, and noticing it (as I have done,
you know, so many times) a-fondling children and grandchildren asleep,
to think that when blood and honour were up--there! I won't! not at
present!--Scratch it out.
She won't scratch it out, and quite honourable; because we have made
an understanding that everything is to be taken down, and that nothing
that is once taken down shall be scratched out. I have the great
misfortune not to be able to read and write, and I am speaking my true
and faithful account of those Adventures, and my lady is writing it,
word for word.
I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop Christopher
Columbus in the South American waters off the Mosquito shore: a
subject of his Gracious Majesty King George of England, and a private
in the Royal Marines.
In those climates, you don't want to do much. I was doing nothing. I

was thinking of the shepherd (my father, I wonder?) on the hillsides by
Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough white coat in all
weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie in a corner of his hut
by night, and who used to let me go about with him and his sheep by
day when I could get nothing else to do, and who used to give me so
little of his victuals and so much of his staff, that I ran away from
him--which was what he wanted all along, I expect--to be knocked
about the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom. I had been knocked
about the world for nine-and-twenty years in all, when I stood looking
along those bright blue South American Waters. Looking after the
shepherd, I may say. Watching him in a half-waking dream, with my
eyes half-shut, as he, and his flock of sheep, and his two dogs, seemed
to move away from the ship's side, far away over the blue water, and go
right down into the sky.
"It's rising out of the water, steady," a voice said close to me. I had
been thinking on so, that it like woke me with a start, though it was no
stranger voice than the voice of Harry Charker, my own comrade.
"What's rising out of the water, steady?" I asked my comrade.
"What?" says he. "The Island."