CHAPTER XXVIII

The End of Sikes

Jacob's Island stands in the Thames, near one of the poorest and dirtiest quarters of London. It is surrounded by a ditch of muddy water six or eight feet deep when the tide is in. The island is deserted; its houses are roofless and empty; the walls are falling down; the windows are windows no more; the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. 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 reasons for a secret dwelling-place, or be very poor indeed, who seek shelter on Jacob's Island.

In an upper room of one of these houses three men sat in gloomy silence. One of them was Toby Crackit and the others were fellow robbers. They were talking about Fagin, who had been arrested that same afternoon. Suddenly a hurried knocking was heard at the door below.

Toby 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.

"We must let him in," he said, taking up the candle.

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 slowly off. White face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days' growth; it was the very ghost of Sikes.

He drew a chair and sat down. Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in silence. At last he said:

"Tonight's paper says that Fagin is taken. 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.

Presently there was a knocking at the door. Crackit left the room and directly came back with Charlie Bates behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy entered the room he saw him.

"Toby," said the boy, shrinking back, as Sikes turned his eyes towards him, "why didn't you tell me this downstairs? Let me go into some other room."

"Charlie," 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!"

Sikes's eyes sunk gradually to the ground.

"Witness, you three," said the boy, becoming more and more excited as he spoke. "I'm not afraid of him. If they come here after him, I'll give him up; I will. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he dares, but if I'm here I'll give him up. Murder! Help! Down with him!"

Pouring out these cries the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the strong man, and in the suddenness of his attack brought him heavily to the ground.

The three spectators did not interfere, and the boy and the man rolled on the ground together. But the struggle 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 noise of hurried footsteps crossing the nearest wooden bridge. Then came a loud knocking at the door, and a murmur from a thousand angry voices.

"Help!" screamed the boy. "He's here. Break down the door!"

"Open the door of some place where I can lock this screaming child," cried Sikes fiercely; running to and fro and dragging the boy. "That door. Quick!" He threw him in, bolted it, and turned the key. "Is the downstairs door fast?"

"Double-locked and chained," replied Crackit.

"The wood ... is it strong?"

"Lined with sheet-iron."

"And the windows too?"

"Yes, and the windows."

"Damn you," cried the desperate murderer, throwing open the window and facing the crowd. "Do your worst! I'll cheat you yet!"

There was a cry of rage from the angry crowd. 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 a man on horseback who burst through the crowd and cried, "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 heavy hammers, and all moved excitedly to and fro, in the darkness below, 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 drew back into the room, "was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a long rope. They're all in front. I may drop into the ditch at the back, and escape that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders and kill myself."

The frightened men pointed to where the ropes were kept. The murderer hastily selected the longest and strongest, and hurried up to the house-top.

All the windows at the back of the house had been long ago bricked up, except a small one in the room where Charlie Bates was locked. And from this window he had never ceased to call on the crowd to guard the back. And thus when the murderer appeared at last on the house-top by the door in the roof, a loud shout declared the fact to those in front, and they immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.

The murderer crept on the roof and looked down over the low wall. The tide was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.

The crowd had been silent during these few moments, watching his movements and doubtful of his purpose. But as soon as they understood it, and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumph to which all their previous shouting had been whispers.

On pressed the people from the front—on, on, on, in a strong struggling crowd of angry voices, with here and there a torch to light them up, and show them out in their fury. Each little bridge bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it. It seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him.

"They have him now," cried a man on the nearest bridge. "Hurrah!" The crowd uncovered their heads and re-echoed the shout.

The man shrank down, thoroughly frightened by the fierceness of the crowd. But then he sprang upon his feet, determined to make one last effort for his life by dropping into the ditch and, at the risk of being choked to death in the mud, trying to creep away in the darkness and confusion.

Roused into new strength and energy, he fastened one end of the rope tightly round the chimney. With the other end he made a running noose. He could let himself down nearly to the ground and he had his knife ready in his hand to cut the rope then and drop.

He put the noose over his head, and was about to place it round his body when suddenly he cried aloud: "The eyes again!" Drawing back as if struck by lightning he lost his balance and dropped from the roof. The noose was on his neck. He fell for five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrible shaking of the limbs, and there he hung, with the knife held tightly in his lifeless hand.