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 woman, 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 wagons 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-
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 536
crushed, half-hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron
bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, and every
imaginable sign of. desolation and neglect.
In such a neighbourhood, 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, and 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 537
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 seeks 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 crib 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’ee, young gentleman,” said Toby, “when a man
keeps himself so very exclusive as I have done, and by that means
has a snug house over his head with nobody a-prying and smelling
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 538
about it, it’s rather a startling thing to have the honour of a visit
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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 539
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 dragging 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.”
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 540
“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—halfblind—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 close
together, starting at every sound. They spoke little, and that in
whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 541
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 softly 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— ground it against it—and sat down.
Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 542
in silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was
instantly averted. Then his hollow voice broke silence, they all
three started. They seemed never to have heard its tones before.
“How came that dog here?”
“Alone. Three hours ago.”
“Tonight’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 the 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 543
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 near 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 sank 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 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 544
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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Oliver Twist 545
