Chapter 5
The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentleman,” said the sergeant, “but I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith.”
“And pray what might you want with him?” retorted my sister.
“Missis,” returned the gallant sergeant, “speaking for the king, I answer, a little job. You see, blacksmith, we have had an accident with handcuffs, and I find the lock of one of them goes wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over them?[21]”
Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would take two hours.
“Would you give me the time?” said the sergeant, addressing himself to Mr. Pumblechook.
“It’s just gone half past two.”
“That’s not so bad,” said the sergeant, reflecting; “How far are the marshes? Not above a mile, I reckon?”
“Just a mile,” said Mrs. Joe.
“Convicts, sergeant?” asked Mr. Wopsle.
“Ay!” returned the sergeant, “two. They are out on the marshes, and we are going to catch them.”
At last, Joe’s job was done. As Joe got on his coat, he proposed that some of us should go down with the soldiers. Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Hubble declined, but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would. Joe said he was agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. Joe approved. Mrs. Joe said, “If you bring the boy back with his head blown to bits by a musket, don’t ask me to put it together again.”
When we were all out in the raw air and were steadily moving towards the marshs, I whispered to Joe, “I hope, Joe, we shan’t find them.” and Joe whispered to me, “I’d give a shilling if they had run, Pip.”
The weather was cold and threatening, the way dreary, darkness coming on, and the people had good fires and were celebtaring the day. A few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after us, but none came out. Joe took me on his back. With my heart thumping, I looked all about for any sign of the convicts. Finally, I saw them both. The soldiers stopped.
After that they began to run. After a while, we could hear one voice calling “Murder!” and another voice, “Convicts! Guard! This way for the runaway convicts!” The soldiers ran like deer, and Joe too.
“Here are both men!” cried the sergeant. “Surrender, you two!”
Water was splashing, and mud was flying.
“Mind!” said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers: “I took him! I give him up to you! Mind that!”
The other was bruised and torn all over.
“Take notice, guard – he tried to murder me,” were his first words.
“Tried to murder him?” said my convict, disdainfully. “Try, and not do it? I took him; that’s what I done. dragged him here. He’s a gentleman, if you please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me!”
The other one still gasped, “He tried – he tried to – murder me.”
“Look here!” said my convict to the sergeant. “I tried to kill him? No, no, no.”
The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his companion, repeated, “He tried to murder me. I should have been a dead man if you had not come up.”
“He lies!” said my convict, with fierce energy.
My convict never looked at me, except that once. He turned to the sergeant, and remarked,
“I wish to say something. It may prevent some persons laying under suspicion alonger me.[22]”
“You can say what you like,” returned the sergeant, standing coolly looking at him with his arms folded, “but you’ll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear about it, you know.”
“A man can’t starve; at least I can’t. I took some wittles, at the village over there.”
“You mean stole,” said the sergeant.
“And I’ll tell you where from. From the blacksmith’s.”
“Halloa!” said the sergeant, staring at Joe.
“Halloa, Pip!” said Joe, staring at me.
“It was some wittles – that’s what it was – and liquor, and a pie.”
“You’re welcome,” returned Joe, “We don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved, poor miserable fellow. Would us, Pip?”
Something clicked in the man’s throat, and he turned his back.
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