Chapter LIV.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind

blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. We

had our pea-coats with us, and I took a bag. Of all my worldly

possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that filled the

bag. Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might return, were

questions utterly unknown to me; nor did I vex my mind with them, for

it was wholly set on Provis’s safety. I only wondered for the passing

moment, as I stopped at the door and looked back, under what altered

circumstances I should next see those rooms, if ever.

We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there, as if

we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of course, I had

taken care that the boat should be ready and everything in order. After

a little show of indecision, which there were none to see but the two

or three amphibious creatures belonging to our Temple stairs, we went

on board and cast off; Herbert in the bow, I steering. It was then

about high-water,—half-past eight.

Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine, and being

with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it had turned,

and row against it until dark. We should then be well in those long

reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, where the river is

broad and solitary, where the water-side inhabitants are very few, and

where lone public-houses are scattered here and there, of which we

could choose one for a resting-place. There, we meant to lie by all

night. The steamer for Hamburg and the steamer for Rotterdam would

start from London at about nine on Thursday morning. We should know at

what time to expect them, according to where we were, and would hail

the first; so that, if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we

should have another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each

vessel.

The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the purpose was

so great to me that I felt it difficult to realise the condition in

which I had been a few hours before. The crisp air, the sunlight, the

movement on the river, and the moving river itself,—the road that ran

with us, seeming to sympathise with us, animate us, and encourage us

on,—freshened me with new hope. I felt mortified to be of so little use

in the boat; but, there were few better oarsmen than my two friends,

and they rowed with a steady stroke that was to last all day.

At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far below its present

extent, and watermen’s boats were far more numerous. Of barges, sailing

colliers, and coasting-traders, there were perhaps, as many as now; but

of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe or a twentieth part so

many. Early as it was, there were plenty of scullers going here and

there that morning, and plenty of barges dropping down with the tide;

the navigation of the river between bridges, in an open boat, was a

much easier and commoner matter in those days than it is in these; and

we went ahead among many skiffs and wherries briskly.

Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate Market with its

oyster-boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and Traitor’s Gate, and

we were in among the tiers of shipping. Here were the Leith, Aberdeen,

and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods, and looking

immensely high out of the water as we passed alongside; here, were

colliers by the score and score, with the coal-whippers plunging off

stages on deck, as counterweights to measures of coal swinging up,

which were then rattled over the side into barges; here, at her

moorings was to-morrow’s steamer for Rotterdam, of which we took good

notice; and here to-morrow’s for Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we

crossed. And now I, sitting in the stern, could see, with a faster

beating heart, Mill Pond Bank and Mill Pond stairs.

“Is he there?” said Herbert.

“Not yet.”

“Right! He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you see his

signal?”

“Not well from here; but I think I see it.—Now I see him! Pull both.

Easy, Herbert. Oars!”

We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on board,

and we were off again. He had a boat-cloak with him, and a black canvas

bag; and he looked as like a river-pilot as my heart could have wished.

“Dear boy!” he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took his

seat. “Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!”

Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty

chain-cables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing buoys, sinking for the

moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood and

shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under the

figure-head of the _John of Sunderland_ making a speech to the winds

(as is done by many Johns), and the _Betsy of Yarmouth_ with a firm

formality of bosom and her knobby eyes starting two inches out of her

head; in and out, hammers going in ship-builders’ yards, saws going at

timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky

ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible

sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent

lightermen, in and out,—out at last upon the clearer river, where the

ships’ boys might take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled

waters with them over the side, and where the festooned sails might fly

out to the wind.

At the stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever since, I had

looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had seen none. We

certainly had not been, and at that time as certainly we were not

either attended or followed by any boat. If we had been waited on by

any boat, I should have run in to shore, and have obliged her to go on,

or to make her purpose evident. But we held our own without any

appearance of molestation.

He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural

part of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the wretched life he

had led accounted for it) that he was the least anxious of any of us.

He was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live to see his

gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign country; he was not

disposed to be passive or resigned, as I understood it; but he had no

notion of meeting danger half way. When it came upon him, he confronted

it, but it must come before he troubled himself.

“If you knowed, dear boy,” he said to me, “what it is to sit here

alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been day by day

betwixt four walls, you’d envy me. But you don’t know what it is.”

“I think I know the delights of freedom,” I answered.

“Ah,” said he, shaking his head gravely. “But you don’t know it equal

to me. You must have been under lock and key, dear boy, to know it

equal to me,—but I ain’t a-going to be low.”

It occurred to me as inconsistent, that, for any mastering idea, he

should have endangered his freedom, and even his life. But I reflected

that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart from all the

habit of his existence to be to him what it would be to another man. I

was not far out, since he said, after smoking a little:—

“You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t’other side the world, I

was always a looking to this side; and it come flat to be there, for

all I was a growing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch, and Magwitch could

come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody’s head would be troubled about

him. They ain’t so easy concerning me here, dear boy,—wouldn’t be,

leastwise, if they knowed where I was.”

“If all goes well,” said I, “you will be perfectly free and safe again

within a few hours.”

“Well,” he returned, drawing a long breath, “I hope so.”

“And think so?”

He dipped his hand in the water over the boat’s gunwale, and said,

smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me:—

“Ay, I s’pose I think so, dear boy. We’d be puzzled to be more quiet

and easy-going than we are at present. But—it’s a flowing so soft and

pleasant through the water, p’raps, as makes me think it—I was a

thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no more see to the

bottom of the next few hours than we can see to the bottom of this

river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t no more hold their tide

than I can hold this. And it’s run through my fingers and gone, you

see!” holding up his dripping hand.

“But for your face I should think you were a little despondent,” said

I.

“Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet, and of

that there rippling at the boat’s head making a sort of a Sunday tune.

Maybe I’m a growing a trifle old besides.”

He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expression of

face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already out of

England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as if he had been

in constant terror; for, when we ran ashore to get some bottles of beer

into the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted that I thought he

would be safest where he was, and he said. “Do you, dear boy?” and

quietly sat down again.

The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the

sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to lose

none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly well. By

imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran out, we lost more and more of

the nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and lower between the

muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us when we were off Gravesend.

As our charge was wrapped in his cloak, I purposely passed within a

boat or two’s length of the floating Custom House, and so out to catch

the stream, alongside of two emigrant ships, and under the bows of a

large transport with troops on the forecastle looking down at us. And

soon the tide began to slacken, and the craft lying at anchor to swing,

and presently they had all swung round, and the ships that were taking

advantage of the new tide to get up to the Pool began to crowd upon us

in a fleet, and we kept under the shore, as much out of the strength of

the tide now as we could, standing carefully off from low shallows and

mudbanks.

Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let her drive

with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an hour’s rest

proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore among some slippery

stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked about. It

was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a dim

horizon; while the winding river turned and turned, and the great

floating buoys upon it turned and turned, and everything else seemed

stranded and still. For now the last of the fleet of ships was round

the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge,

straw-laden, with a brown sail, had followed; and some

ballast-lighters, shaped like a child’s first rude imitation of a boat,

lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles

stood crippled in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes

stuck out of the mud, and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red

landmarks and tidemarks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage

and an old roofless building slipped into the mud, and all about us was

stagnation and mud.

We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was much harder

work now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and rowed and rowed and

rowed until the sun went down. By that time the river had lifted us a

little, so that we could see above the bank. There was the red sun, on

the low level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast deepening into

black; and there was the solitary flat marsh; and far away there were

the rising grounds, between which and us there seemed to be no life,

save here and there in the foreground a melancholy gull.

As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the full,

would not rise early, we held a little council; a short one, for

clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we could

find. So, they plied their oars once more, and I looked out for

anything like a house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for four or

five dull miles. It was very cold, and, a collier coming by us, with

her galley-fire smoking and flaring, looked like a comfortable home.

The night was as dark by this time as it would be until morning; and

what light we had, seemed to come more from the river than the sky, as

the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected stars.

At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that we

were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at irregular

intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound came, one or

other of us was sure to start, and look in that direction. Here and

there, the set of the current had worn down the bank into a little

creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them

nervously. Sometimes, “What was that ripple?” one of us would say in a

low voice. Or another, “Is that a boat yonder?” And afterwards we would

fall into a dead silence, and I would sit impatiently thinking with

what an unusual amount of noise the oars worked in the thowels.

At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently afterwards ran

alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been picked up hard

by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and found the light

to be in a window of a public-house. It was a dirty place enough, and I

dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers; but there was a good

fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and bacon to eat, and various

liquors to drink. Also, there were two double-bedded rooms,—“such as

they were,” the landlord said. No other company was in the house than

the landlord, his wife, and a grizzled male creature, the “Jack” of the

little causeway, who was as slimy and smeary as if he had been

low-water mark too.

With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all came

ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder and boat-hook, and all

else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very good meal by the

kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms: Herbert and Startop

were to occupy one; I and our charge the other. We found the air as

carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to life; and there

were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the beds than I should have

thought the family possessed. But we considered ourselves well off,

notwithstanding, for a more solitary place we could not have found.

While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, the

Jack—who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair of shoes

on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs and bacon, as

interesting relics that he had taken a few days ago from the feet of a

drowned seaman washed ashore—asked me if we had seen a four-oared

galley going up with the tide? When I told him No, he said she must

have gone down then, and yet she “took up too,” when she left there.

“They must ha’ thought better on’t for some reason or another,” said

the Jack, “and gone down.”

“A four-oared galley, did you say?” said I.

“A four,” said the Jack, “and two sitters.”

“Did they come ashore here?”

“They put in with a stone two-gallon jar for some beer. I’d ha’ been

glad to pison the beer myself,” said the Jack, “or put some rattling

physic in it.”

“Why?”

“_I_ know why,” said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, as if much

mud had washed into his throat.

“He thinks,” said the landlord, a weakly meditative man with a pale

eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack,—“he thinks they was, what

they wasn’t.”

“_I_ knows what I thinks,” observed the Jack.

“_You_ thinks Custom ’Us, Jack?” said the landlord.

“I do,” said the Jack.

“Then you’re wrong, Jack.”

“AM I!”

In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence in

his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked into it,

knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and put it on

again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so right that he

could afford to do anything.

“Why, what do you make out that they done with their buttons then,

Jack?” asked the landlord, vacillating weakly.

“Done with their buttons?” returned the Jack. “Chucked ’em overboard.

Swallered ’em. Sowed ’em, to come up small salad. Done with their

buttons!”

“Don’t be cheeky, Jack,” remonstrated the landlord, in a melancholy and

pathetic way.

“A Custom ’Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons,” said the

Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt, “when

they comes betwixt him and his own light. A four and two sitters don’t

go hanging and hovering, up with one tide and down with another, and

both with and against another, without there being Custom ’Us at the

bottom of it.” Saying which he went out in disdain; and the landlord,

having no one to reply upon, found it impracticable to pursue the

subject.

This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. The dismal wind

was muttering round the house, the tide was flapping at the shore, and

I had a feeling that we were caged and threatened. A four-oared galley

hovering about in so unusual a way as to attract this notice was an

ugly circumstance that I could not get rid of. When I had induced

Provis to go up to bed, I went outside with my two companions (Startop

by this time knew the state of the case), and held another council.

Whether we should remain at the house until near the steamer’s time,

which would be about one in the afternoon, or whether we should put off

early in the morning, was the question we discussed. On the whole we

deemed it the better course to lie where we were, until within an hour

or so of the steamer’s time, and then to get out in her track, and

drift easily with the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned into

the house and went to bed.

I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well for a

few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign of the house

(the Ship) was creaking and banging about, with noises that startled

me. Rising softly, for my charge lay fast asleep, I looked out of the

window. It commanded the causeway where we had hauled up our boat, and,

as my eyes adapted themselves to the light of the clouded moon, I saw

two men looking into her. They passed by under the window, looking at

nothing else, and they did not go down to the landing-place which I

could discern to be empty, but struck across the marsh in the direction

of the Nore.

My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two men going

away. But reflecting, before I got into his room, which was at the back

of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Startop had had a harder

day than I, and were fatigued, I forbore. Going back to my window, I

could see the two men moving over the marsh. In that light, however, I

soon lost them, and, feeling very cold, lay down to think of the

matter, and fell asleep again.

We were up early. As we walked to and fro, all four together, before

breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen. Again our

charge was the least anxious of the party. It was very likely that the

men belonged to the Custom House, he said quietly, and that they had no

thought of us. I tried to persuade myself that it was so,—as, indeed,

it might easily be. However, I proposed that he and I should walk away

together to a distant point we could see, and that the boat should take

us aboard there, or as near there as might prove feasible, at about

noon. This being considered a good precaution, soon after breakfast he

and I set forth, without saying anything at the tavern.

He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap me

on the shoulder. One would have supposed that it was I who was in

danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me. We spoke very little. As

we approached the point, I begged him to remain in a sheltered place,

while I went on to reconnoitre; for it was towards it that the men had

passed in the night. He complied, and I went on alone. There was no

boat off the point, nor any boat drawn up anywhere near it, nor were

there any signs of the men having embarked there. But, to be sure, the

tide was high, and there might have been some footprints under water.

When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, and saw that I

waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and there we waited;

sometimes lying on the bank, wrapped in our coats, and sometimes moving

about to warm ourselves, until we saw our boat coming round. We got

aboard easily, and rowed out into the track of the steamer. By that

time it wanted but ten minutes of one o’clock, and we began to look out

for her smoke.

But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and soon afterwards

we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they were coming on

at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took that opportunity of

saying good-bye to Herbert and Startop. We had all shaken hands

cordially, and neither Herbert’s eyes nor mine were quite dry, when I

saw a four-oared galley shoot out from under the bank but a little way

ahead of us, and row out into the same track.

A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer’s smoke,

by reason of the bend and wind of the river; but now she was visible,

coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop to keep before the

tide, that she might see us lying by for her, and I adjured Provis to

sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He answered cheerily, “Trust to

me, dear boy,” and sat like a statue. Meantime the galley, which was

very skilfully handled, had crossed us, let us come up with her, and

fallen alongside. Leaving just room enough for the play of the oars,

she kept alongside, drifting when we drifted, and pulling a stroke or

two when we pulled. Of the two sitters one held the rudder-lines, and

looked at us attentively,—as did all the rowers; the other sitter was

wrapped up, much as Provis was, and seemed to shrink, and whisper some

instruction to the steerer as he looked at us. Not a word was spoken in

either boat.

Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which steamer was first,

and gave me the word “Hamburg,” in a low voice, as we sat face to face.

She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her peddles grew

louder and louder. I felt as if her shadow were absolutely upon us,

when the galley hailed us. I answered.

“You have a returned Transport there,” said the man who held the lines.

“That’s the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel Magwitch,

otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call upon him to surrender,

and you to assist.”

At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his crew,

he ran the galley abroad of us. They had pulled one sudden stroke

ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were holding on

to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing. This caused great

confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them calling to us, and

heard the order given to stop the paddles, and heard them stop, but

felt her driving down upon us irresistibly. In the same moment, I saw

the steersman of the galley lay his hand on his prisoner’s shoulder,

and saw that both boats were swinging round with the force of the tide,

and saw that all hands on board the steamer were running forward quite

frantically. Still, in the same moment, I saw the prisoner start up,

lean across his captor, and pull the cloak from the neck of the

shrinking sitter in the galley. Still in the same moment, I saw that

the face disclosed, was the face of the other convict of long ago.

Still, in the same moment, I saw the face tilt backward with a white

terror on it that I shall never forget, and heard a great cry on board

the steamer, and a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat sink

from under me.

It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a thousand

mill-weirs and a thousand flashes of light; that instant past, I was

taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and Startop was there;

but our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone.

What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious blowing off of

her steam, and her driving on, and our driving on, I could not at first

distinguish sky from water or shore from shore; but the crew of the

galley righted her with great speed, and, pulling certain swift strong

strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man looking silently and

eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark object was seen in it,

bearing towards us on the tide. No man spoke, but the steersman held up

his hand, and all softly backed water, and kept the boat straight and

true before it. As it came nearer, I saw it to be Magwitch, swimming,

but not swimming freely. He was taken on board, and instantly manacled

at the wrists and ankles.

The galley was kept steady, and the silent, eager look-out at the water

was resumed. But, the Rotterdam steamer now came up, and apparently not

understanding what had happened, came on at speed. By the time she had

been hailed and stopped, both steamers were drifting away from us, and

we were rising and falling in a troubled wake of water. The look-out

was kept, long after all was still again and the two steamers were

gone; but everybody knew that it was hopeless now.

At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore towards the tavern

we had lately left, where we were received with no little surprise.

Here I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch,—Provis no

longer,—who had received some very severe injury in the chest, and a

deep cut in the head.

He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel of the

steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The injury to

his chest (which rendered his breathing extremely painful) he thought

he had received against the side of the galley. He added that he did

not pretend to say what he might or might not have done to Compeyson,

but that, in the moment of his laying his hand on his cloak to identify

him, that villain had staggered up and staggered back, and they had

both gone overboard together, when the sudden wrenching of him

(Magwitch) out of our boat, and the endeavour of his captor to keep him

in it, had capsized us. He told me in a whisper that they had gone down

fiercely locked in each other’s arms, and that there had been a

struggle under water, and that he had disengaged himself, struck out,

and swum away.

I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he thus told

me. The officer who steered the galley gave the same account of their

going overboard.

When I asked this officer’s permission to change the prisoner’s wet

clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could get at the

public-house, he gave it readily: merely observing that he must take

charge of everything his prisoner had about him. So the pocket-book

which had once been in my hands passed into the officer’s. He further

gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to London; but declined to

accord that grace to my two friends.

The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned man had gone

down, and undertook to search for the body in the places where it was

likeliest to come ashore. His interest in its recovery seemed to me to

be much heightened when he heard that it had stockings on. Probably, it

took about a dozen drowned men to fit him out completely; and that may

have been the reason why the different articles of his dress were in

various stages of decay.

We remained at the public-house until the tide turned, and then

Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board. Herbert and

Startop were to get to London by land, as soon as they could. We had a

doleful parting, and when I took my place by Magwitch’s side, I felt

that that was my place henceforth while he lived.

For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away; and in the hunted,

wounded, shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man

who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately,

gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a

series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to

Joe.

His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night drew on,

and often he could not repress a groan. I tried to rest him on the arm

I could use, in any easy position; but it was dreadful to think that I

could not be sorry at heart for his being badly hurt, since it was

unquestionably best that he should die. That there were, still living,

people enough who were able and willing to identify him, I could not

doubt. That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope. He who had

been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken

prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation

under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who

was the cause of his arrest.

As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left behind us,

and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back, I told him how

grieved I was to think that he had come home for my sake.

“Dear boy,” he answered, “I’m quite content to take my chance. I’ve

seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me.”

No. I had thought about that, while we had been there side by side. No.

Apart from any inclinations of my own, I understood Wemmick’s hint now.

I foresaw that, being convicted, his possessions would be forfeited to

the Crown.

“Lookee here, dear boy,” said he “It’s best as a gentleman should not

be knowed to belong to me now. Only come to see me as if you come by

chance alonger Wemmick. Sit where I can see you when I am swore to, for

the last o’ many times, and I don’t ask no more.”

“I will never stir from your side,” said I, “when I am suffered to be

near you. Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been to me!”

I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face away as

he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old sound in his

throat,—softened now, like all the rest of him. It was a good thing

that he had touched this point, for it put into my mind what I might

not otherwise have thought of until too late,—that he need never know

how his hopes of enriching me had perished.