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Charles Dickens
Chapter 56
Charles Dickens
 
 
1       I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so
2  bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it,
3  in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have
4  seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower
5  in a plain, and throwing its fore-cast shadow even on the incidents
6  of my childish days.

7       For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often. I have started
8  up so vividly impressed by it, that its fury has yet seemed raging
9  in my quiet room, in the still night. I dream of it sometimes,
10  though at lengthened and uncertain intervals, to this hour. I have
11  an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest
12  mention of a sea-shore, as strong as any of which my mind is
13  conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to
14  write it down. I do not recall it, but see it done; for it happens
15  again before me.

16       The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship,
17  my good old nurse (almost broken-hearted for me, when we first met)
18  came up to London. I was constantly with her, and her brother, and
19  the Micawbers (they being very much together); but Emily I never
20  saw.

21       One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with
22  Peggotty and her brother. Our conversation turned on Ham. She
23  described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how
24  manfully and quietly he had borne himself. Most of all, of late,
25  when she believed he was most tried. It was a subject of which the
26  affectionate creature never tired; and our interest in hearing the
27  many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate,
28  was equal to hers in relating them.

29       MY aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at
30  Highgate; I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house
31  at Dover. We had a temporary lodging in Covent Garden. As I
32  walked home to it, after this evening's conversation, reflecting on
33  what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth,
34  I wavered in the original purpose I had formed, of leaving a letter
35  for Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on board the ship,
36  and thought it would be better to write to her now. She might
37  desire, I thought, after receiving my communication, to send some
38  parting word by me to her unhappy lover. I ought to give her the
39  opportunity.

40       I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to
41  her. I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me
42  to tell her what I have already written in its place in these
43  sheets. I faithfully repeated it. I had no need to enlarge upon
44  it, if I had had the right. Its deep fidelity and goodness were
45  not to be adorned by me or any man. I left it out, to be sent
46  round in the morning; with a line to Mr. Peggotty, requesting him
47  to give it to her; and went to bed at daybreak.

48       I was weaker than I knew then; and, not falling asleep until the
49  sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day. I was roused by
50  the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside. I felt it in my
51  sleep, as I suppose we all do feel such things.

52       'Trot, my dear,' she said, when I opened my eyes, 'I couldn't make
53  up my mind to disturb you. Mr. Peggotty is here; shall he come
54  up?'

55       I replied yes, and he soon appeared.

56       'Mas'r Davy,' he said, when we had shaken hands, 'I giv Em'ly your
57  letter, sir, and she writ this heer; and begged of me fur to ask
58  you to read it, and if you see no hurt in't, to be so kind as take
59  charge on't.'

60       'Have you read it?' said I.

61       He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows:

62       'I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for
63  your good and blessed kindness to me!

64       'I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I
65  die. They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have
66  prayed over them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you
67  are, and what uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to
68  him.

69       'Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in
70  this world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child
71  and come to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore.'

72       This, blotted with tears, was the letter.

73       'May I tell her as you doen't see no hurt in't, and as you'll be so
74  kind as take charge on't, Mas'r Davy?' said Mr. Peggotty, when I
75  had read it.
76  'Unquestionably,' said I - 'but I am thinking -'

77       'Yes, Mas'r Davy?'

78       'I am thinking,' said I, 'that I'll go down again to Yarmouth.
79  There's time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the
80  ship sails. My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude;
81  to put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to
82  enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got
83  it, will be a kindness to both of them. I solemnly accepted his
84  commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too
85  completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am restless, and
86  shall be better in motion. I'll go down tonight.'

87       Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was
88  of my mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my
89  intention, would have had the effect. He went round to the coach
90  office, at my request, and took the box-seat for me on the mail.
91  In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had
92  traversed under so many vicissitudes.

93       'Don't you think that,' I asked the coachman, in the first stage
94  out of London, 'a very remarkable sky? I don't remember to have
95  seen one like it.'

96       'Nor I - not equal to it,' he replied. 'That's wind, sir.
97  There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.'

98       It was a murky confusion - here and there blotted with a colour
99  like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel - of flying clouds,
100  tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in
101  the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the
102  deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to
103  plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of
104  nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been
105  a wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great
106  sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more
107  overcast, and blew hard.

108       But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
109  over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow,
110  harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could
111  scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night
112  (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short),
113  the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often
114  in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over.
115  Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of
116  steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or
117  lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility
118  of continuing the struggle.

119       When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in
120  Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never
121  known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to
122  Ipswich - very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since
123  we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in
124  the market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night,
125  fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the
126  inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead
127  having been ripped off a high church-tower, and flung into a
128  by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of
129  country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen
130  great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered
131  about the roads and fields. Still, there was no abatement in the
132  storm, but it blew harder.

133       As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this
134  mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and
135  more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our
136  lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over
137  miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every
138  sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little
139  breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of
140  the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the
141  rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and
142  buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out
143  to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a
144  wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

145       I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea;
146  staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and
147  seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling
148  slates and tiles; and holding by people I met, at angry corners.
149  Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the
150  people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then
151  braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer
152  out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

153       joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were
154  away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to
155  think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for
156  safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their
157  heads, as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one
158  another; ship-owners, excited and uneasy; children, huddling
159  together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners,
160  disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea from
161  behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.

162       The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to
163  look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying
164  stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high
165  watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into
166  surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the
167  receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out
168  deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the
169  earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed
170  themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment
171  of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath,
172  rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster.
173  Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with
174  a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted
175  up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a
176  booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made,
177  to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place
178  away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and
179  buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed
180  to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.

181       Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind - for it
182  is still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow
183  upon that coast - had brought together, I made my way to his house.
184  It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back
185  ways and by-lanes, to the yard where he worked. I learned, there,
186  that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of
187  ship-repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would
188  be back tomorrow morning, in good time.

189       I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and
190  tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o'clock in the afternoon.
191  I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the
192  waiter, coming to stir it, as an excuse for talking, told me that
193  two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and
194  that some other ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads,
195  and trying, in great distress, to keep off shore. Mercy on them,
196  and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had another night like the
197  last!

198       I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary; and felt an
199  uneasiness in Ham's not being there, disproportionate to the
200  occasion. I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by
201  late events; and my long exposure to the fierce wind had confused
202  me. There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections, that
203  I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I
204  had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I
205  think, to encounter someone who I knew must be then in London. So
206  to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my
207  mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place
208  naturally awakened; and they were particularly distinct and vivid.

209       In this state, the waiter's dismal intelligence about the ships
210  immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition,
211  with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an
212  apprehension of his returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being
213  lost. This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to
214  the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat-builder if he
215  thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely? If he gave
216  me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and
217  prevent it by bringing him with me.

218       I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none
219  too soon; for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was
220  locking the yard-gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the
221  question, and said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out
222  of them, would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham
223  Peggotty, who had been born to seafaring.

224       So sensible of this, beforehand, that I had really felt ashamed of
225  doing what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the
226  inn. If such a wind could rise, I think it was rising. The howl
227  and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in
228  the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered
229  me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in
230  the morning. But there was now a great darkness besides; and that
231  invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.

232       I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue
233  steadfast to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to
234  the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a
235  tumult in them. Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running
236  with the thundering sea, - the storm, and my uneasiness regarding
237  Ham were always in the fore-ground.

238       My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself
239  with a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber
240  before the fire, without losing my consciousness, either of the
241  uproar out of doors, or of the place in which I was. Both became
242  overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror; and when I awoke - or
243  rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair- my
244  whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.

245       I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to
246  the awful noises: looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire.
247  At length, the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall
248  tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.

249       It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the
250  inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went
251  to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all
252  such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake,
253  with every sense refined.

254       For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining,
255  now, that I heard shrieks out at sea; now, that I distinctly heard
256  the firing of signal guns; and now, the fall of houses in the town.
257  I got up, several times, and looked out; but could see nothing,
258  except the reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had
259  left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the
260  black void.

261       At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried
262  on my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I
263  dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the
264  watchers were clustered together, in various attitudes, about a
265  table, purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought
266  near the door. A pretty girl, who had her ears stopped with her
267  apron, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared,
268  supposing me to be a spirit; but the others had more presence of
269  mind, and were glad of an addition to their company. One man,
270  referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether
271  I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down, were
272  out in the storm?

273       I remained there, I dare say, two hours. Once, I opened the
274  yard-gate, and looked into the empty street. The sand, the
275  sea-weed, and the flakes of foam, were driving by; and I was
276  obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again,
277  and make it fast against the wind.

278       There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when I at length
279  returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again,
280  fell - off a tower and down a precipice - into the depths of sleep.
281  I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of
282  being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing
283  in my dream. At length, I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and
284  was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don't know,
285  at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.

286       The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could
287  not hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great
288  exertion and awoke. It was broad day - eight or nine o'clock; the
289  storm raging, in lieu of the batteries; and someone knocking and
290  calling at my door.

291       'What is the matter?' I cried.

292       'A wreck! Close by!'

293       I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?

294       'A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine.
295  Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It's thought, down on the
296  beach, she'll go to pieces every moment.'

297       The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase; and I
298  wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into
299  the street.

300       Numbers of people were there before me, all running in one
301  direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good
302  many, and soon came facing the wild sea.

303       The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more
304  sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of, had been
305  diminished by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of hundreds.
306  But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole
307  night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last.
308  Every appearance it had then presented, bore the expression of
309  being swelled; and the height to which the breakers rose, and,
310  looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in
311  interminable hosts, was most appalling.
312  In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in
313  the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless
314  efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I
315  looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming
316  heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next
317  me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo'd arrow on it, pointing in
318  the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it,
319  close in upon us!

320       One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and
321  lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all
322  that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat - which she did without a
323  moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable - beat the
324  side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being
325  made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship,
326  which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly
327  descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure
328  with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great
329  cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the
330  shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck,
331  made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks,
332  bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.

333       The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and
334  a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship
335  had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then
336  lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was
337  parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling
338  and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long.
339  As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach;
340  four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the
341  rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with
342  the curling hair.

343       There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like
344  a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of
345  her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now
346  nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards
347  the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy
348  men, was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and
349  again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on the shore
350  increased. Men groaned, and clasped their hands; women shrieked,
351  and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the
352  beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one
353  of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not
354  to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.

355       They were making out to me, in an agitated way - I don't know how,
356  for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to
357  understand - that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago,
358  and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as
359  to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication
360  with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that
361  some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them
362  part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.

363       I ran to him - as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help.
364  But, distracted though I was, by a sight so new to me and terrible,
365  the determination in his face, and his look out to sea - exactly
366  the same look as I remembered in connexion with the morning after
367  Emily's flight - awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him
368  back with both arms; and implored the men with whom I had been
369  speaking, not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him
370  stir from off that sand!

371       Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck, we saw the
372  cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men,
373  and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the
374  mast.

375       Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the
376  calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the
377  people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind.
378  'Mas'r Davy,' he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, 'if my
379  time is come, 'tis come. If 'tan't, I'll bide it. Lord above
380  bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a-going off!'

381       I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the
382  people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived,
383  that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should
384  endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with
385  whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they
386  rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes
387  from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of
388  figures that hid him from me. Then, I saw him standing alone, in
389  a seaman's frock and trousers: a rope in his hand, or slung to his
390  wrist: another round his body: and several of the best men holding,
391  at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself,
392  slack upon the shore, at his feet.

393       The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up. I saw that
394  she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary
395  man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still, he clung to it. He had
396  a singular red cap on, - not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer
397  colour; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction
398  rolled and bulged, and his anticipative death-knell rung, he was
399  seen by all of us to wave it. I saw him do it now, and thought I
400  was going distracted, when his action brought an old remembrance to
401  my mind of a once dear friend.

402       Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended
403  breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great
404  retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the
405  rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and
406  in a moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills,
407  falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again
408  to land. They hauled in hastily.

409       He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from where I stood; but he
410  took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some
411  directions for leaving him more free - or so I judged from the
412  motion of his arm - and was gone as before.

413       And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with
414  the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the
415  shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The
416  distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the
417  strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was so near,
418  that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to
419  it, - when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on
420  shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with
421  a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

422       Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been
423  broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in.
424  Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet -
425  insensible - dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no
426  one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means
427  of restoration were tried; but he had been beaten to death by the
428  great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.

429       As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done,
430  a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and
431  ever since, whispered my name at the door.

432       'Sir,' said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face,
433  which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, 'will you come over
434  yonder?'

435       The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look.
436  I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to
437  support me:

438       'Has a body come ashore?'

439       He said, 'Yes.'

440       'Do I know it?' I asked then.

441       He answered nothing.

442       But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she and
443  I had looked for shells, two children - on that part of it where
444  some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had
445  been scattered by the wind - among the ruins of the home he had
446  wronged - I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had
447  often seen him lie at school.

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