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_ 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 rougest 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 crig 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.'
'To-night'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 window 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. _
Read next: CHAPTER LI - AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND COMPREHENDING A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF SETTLEMENT OR PIN-MONEY
Read previous: CHAPTER XLIX - MONKS AND MR. BROWNLOW AT LENGTH MEET. THEIR CONVERSATION, AND THE INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT
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