One: Great Expectations: Charles Dickens

My father's family name is Pirrip. My christian name is Philip. I called myself Pip. My father's family name is on his tombstone.  My sister is Mrs Joe Gargery, and her husband is a blacksmith.  I never saw my father or my mother.  Their days were long before the days of photograph. My memory of them is associated with their tombstones.  The shape of letters on the tombstone of my father gave me an odd idea of how he looked: A square, stout, dark man with curly black hair.  From the character and turn of inscription, "Also a Georgiana, wife of the above" I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.  The five little stone lozenges each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up struggling for life very early.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.  On a memorable raw afternoon towards evening I began to identify things clearly.  The bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard, Philip Pirrip my father and Georgiana my mother were dead and buried; and Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it was marshes; and the low dark gray line beyond was the river, and the distant 

savage hideout from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all, and beginning to cry was Pip.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice.  A man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch.  "Keep still, you little devil, or I will cut your throat." 

A fearful man, all in the coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.  A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied around his head.  A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattred in his head as he seized me by the chin.

"O! don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror.  "Pray, don't do it, sir." 

"Tell us your name!" said the man.

"Pip, sir." 

"Once more," said the man staring at me.

"Pip.  Pip, sir."

"Show us where you live," said the man.  "Point out the place." 

I pointed to where our Village lay, on that flat in-shore among the alder trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets.  There was nothing in themt but a piece of bread.

When the church came to itself --- for he was so sudden and strong that he made it to go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet ---when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.

" You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, " What fat cheeks you have got?"

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time under sized, and not strong.

"Good heavens! I feel I could eat them." said the man, with a threatening shake of.his head.

"I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly to keep myself upon it; and partly to keep myself from crying.

"Now look here!" said the man.  "Where's your mother?"

"There, sir." said I

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.

"There, sir," I timidly explained.  "Also  Georgiana, that's my mother."

"Oh!" said he, coming back.  "And is that your father along with your mother?"

"Yes sir, " said I, "him too, late of this parish." 

"Ha" he muttered then, considering.

"Who do.you live with?"

" My sister, sir.  Mrs Joe Gargery. Wife of Gargery, the blacksmith, sir." 

"Blacksmith, eh?" said he, and looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg, several times, he came closer to me, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

"Now, look here," he said, "the question to be whether you are to be let to live.  You know what a file is?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you know what a wittles is?"

"Yes, sir."

After each question he tilted me over a little more so as to give me greater sense of helplessness and danger.

"You get me a file." He tilted me again. You bring them both to me." He tilted me again.  "Or I'll have your heart and liver out."

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more."

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll that the steeple jumped over its own weather-cock.   Then he held me by the arms in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these tearful terms:

"You bring me, tomorrow morning early, that file and the wittles.  You bring them to me, at the old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen me, and you shall be let to live.  If you fail, or go from my word, your heart and liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Don't think I am alone.  There's a young man with me, I am an angel when compared with him. That young man hears the word I speak.  He has a secret way peculiar to himself of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.  You can't hide from him.  A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep his way to you and tear you open.  I am keeping that young man from you at present with great difficulty.  I find it very hard to hold him. Now, what you say?"

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning.

"Say, Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man. I said so, and he took me down.

"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you have undertaken, and you remember that young man, and you go home!"

"Goodnight, sir," I faltered.

"Much of that!" said he glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog.  Or a eel."

He hugged his shuddering body in both his arms --- clasping himself as if to hold himself together, and limped towards the low church wall.

As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my little eyes, as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, got over it like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff and then turned round to look at me.  When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs.  But soon looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the greater stones dropped into marshes here and there, for stepping-places, when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look him go, and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad not yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed.  On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered --- like an unhooped cask upon a pole --- an ugly thing when you were near it; the other gibbet, with some chains hanging to it, which had once held a pirate.  The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.  It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so, and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him.  But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.

END OF THE CHAPTER