"God knows you're welcome to it - so far as it was ever mine,"
returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. "We don't know
what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for
it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. - Would us, Pip?"

The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man's
throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and
his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made
of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which
was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed
surprised to see him, or interested in seeing him, or glad to see
him, or sorry to see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody in
the boat growled as if to dogs, "Give way, you!" which was the
signal for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, we saw
the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like
a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty
chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like
the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him taken
up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were flung
hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with
him.


Chapter 6

My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so
unexpectedly exonerated, did not impel me to frank disclosure; but
I hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.