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to read it, and if you see no hurt in’t, to be so kind as take charge

on’t.’

‘Have you read it?’ said I.

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

‘I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for your

good and blessed kindness to me!

‘I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I die.

They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have prayed over

them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you are, and what

uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.

‘Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in this

world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come

to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore.’

This, blotted with tears, was the letter.

‘May I tell her as you doen’t see no hurt in’t, and as you’ll be so kind

as take charge on’t, Mas’r Davy?’ said Mr. Peggotty, when I had read it.

‘Unquestionably,’ said I--‘but I am thinking--’

‘Yes, Mas’r Davy?’

‘I am thinking,’ said I, ‘that I’ll go down again to Yarmouth. There’s

time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My

mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude; to put this letter

of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her,

in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to

both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and

cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am

restless, and shall be better in motion. I’ll go down tonight.’

Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was of my

mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my intention, would

have had the effect. He went round to the coach office, at my request,

and took the box-seat for me on the mail. In the evening I started,

by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many

vicissitudes.

‘Don’t you think that,’ I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of

London, ‘a very remarkable sky? I don’t remember to have seen one like

it.’

‘Nor I--not equal to it,’ he replied. ‘That’s wind, sir. There’ll be

mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.’

It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a colour like the

colour of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds, tossed up into

most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than

there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the

earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in

a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were

frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising then, with

an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and

the sky was more overcast, and blew hard.

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely

over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder

and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face

the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in

September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or

came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the

coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this

storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any

shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a

sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth

when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like

of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich--very late,

having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of

London; and found a cluster of people in the market-place, who had

risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of

these, congregating about the inn-yard while we changed horses, told us

of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church-tower, and

flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell

of country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen

great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered about

the roads and fields. Still, there was no abatement in the storm, but it

blew harder.

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty

wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific.

Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered

salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat

country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its

banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us.

When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught

at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another

shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the

people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair,

making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea; staggering

along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with

flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and

holding by people I met, at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw,

not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind

buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look

away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag

back.

Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away

in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think

might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety.

Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads, as they

looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; ship-owners,

excited and uneasy; children, huddling together, and peering into older

faces; even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their

glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were

surveying an enemy.

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at

it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand,

and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came

rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if

the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a

hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its

purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows

thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the

land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full

might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another

monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys

(with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted

up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming

sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change

its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal

shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the

clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of

all nature.

Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind--for it is

still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow upon

that coast--had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was

shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back ways and

by-lanes, to the yard where he worked. I learned, there, that he had

gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship-repairing

in which his skill was required; but that he would be back tomorrow

morning, in good time.

I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and tried to

sleep, but in vain, it was five o’clock in the afternoon. I had not sat

five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to stir

it, as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down,

with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other ships had been

seen labouring hard in the Roads, and trying, in great distress, to keep

off shore. Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had

another night like the last!

I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary; and felt an

uneasiness in Ham’s not being there, disproportionate to the occasion. I

was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by late events; and my

long exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that jumble

in my thoughts and recollections, that I had lost the clear arrangement

of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the town, I should

not have been surprised, I think, to encounter someone who I knew must

be then in London. So to speak, there was in these respects a curious

inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances

the place naturally awakened; and they were particularly distinct and

vivid.

In this state, the waiter’s dismal intelligence about the ships

immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my

uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an apprehension of his

returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being lost. This grew so strong

with me, that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner,

and ask the boat-builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea

at all likely? If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go

over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.

I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none too

soon; for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking

the yard-gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and said

there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out of them, would put off

in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham Peggotty, who had been born to

seafaring.

So sensible of this, beforehand, that I had really felt ashamed of doing

what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the inn. If

such a wind could rise, I think it was rising. The howl and roar, the

rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the

apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious

tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in the morning. But there

was now a great darkness besides; and that invested the storm with new

terrors, real and fanciful.

I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast

to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm

without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them.

Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with the thundering

sea,--the storm, and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the

fore-ground.

My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself with

a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber before

the fire, without losing my consciousness, either of the uproar out of

doors, or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new

and indefinable horror; and when I awoke--or rather when I shook off

the lethargy that bound me in my chair--my whole frame thrilled with

objectless and unintelligible fear.

I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the

awful noises: looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire.

At length, the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall

tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.

It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the

inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed,

exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all such sensations

vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense

refined.

For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining, now,

that I heard shrieks out at sea; now, that I distinctly heard the firing

of signal guns; and now, the fall of houses in the town. I got up,

several times, and looked out; but could see nothing, except the

reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had left burning,

and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.

At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried on

my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I dimly

saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the watchers were

clustered together, in various attitudes, about a table, purposely moved

away from the great chimney, and brought near the door. A pretty girl,

who had her ears stopped with her apron, and her eyes upon the door,

screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a spirit; but the others

had more presence of mind, and were glad of an addition to their

company. One man, referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked

me whether I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down,

were out in the storm?

I remained there, I dare say, two hours. Once, I opened the yard-gate,

and looked into the empty street. The sand, the sea-weed, and the flakes

of foam, were driving by; and I was obliged to call for assistance

before I could shut the gate again, and make it fast against the wind.

There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when I at length returned

to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell--off

a tower and down a precipice--into the depths of sleep. I have an

impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of being elsewhere and

in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing in my dream. At length,

I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and was engaged with two dear

friends, but who they were I don’t know, at the siege of some town in a

roar of cannonading.

The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could not

hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great exertion

and awoke. It was broad day--eight or nine o’clock; the storm raging, in