Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens [first ebook reader .txt] 📗

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 nearer me,” answered the boy, still retreating, and looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer’s face. “You monster!”

The man stopped halfway, and they looked at each other; but Sikes’s eyes sunk 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 out 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 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 downstairs door fast?”

“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.

“The panels⁠—are they strong?”

“Lined with sheet-iron.”

“And the windows too?”

“Yes, and the windows.”

“Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd. “Do your worst! I’ll cheat you yet!”

Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to those who were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle, and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried, beneath the window, in a voice that rose above all others, “Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!”

The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called for ladders, some for sledgehammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the waterspout and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind: and joined from time to time in one loud furious roar.

“The tide,” cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and shut the faces out, “the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a long rope. They’re all in front. I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders and kill myself.”

The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up to the housetop.

All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up, except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that was too small even for the passage of his body. But, from this aperture, he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the housetop by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.

He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty to open it from the inside;