audible lamentations of the women, and the shuffling steps of the

bearers on the stone pavement. They reached the spot where the

bereaved husband stood: and stopped. He laid his hand upon the

coffin, and mechanically adjusting the pall with which it was covered,

motioned them onward. The turnkeys in the prison lobby took off their

hats as it passed through, and in another moment the heavy gate

closed behind it. He looked vacantly upon the crowd, and fell heavily

to the ground.

'Although for many weeks after this, he was watched, night and day,

in the wildest ravings of fever, neither the consciousness of his loss,

nor the recollection of the vow he had made, ever left him for a

moment. Scenes changed before his eyes, place succeeded place, and

event followed event, in all the hurry of delirium; but they were all

connected in some way with the great object of his mind. He was

sailing over a boundless expanse of sea, with a blood-red sky above,

and the angry waters, lashed into fury beneath, boiling and eddying

up, on every side. There was another vessel before them, toiling and

labouring in the howling storm; her canvas fluttering in ribbons from

the mast, and her deck thronged with figures who were lashed to the

sides, over which huge waves every instant burst, sweeping away

some devoted creatures into the foaming sea. Onward they bore,

amidst the roaring mass of water, with a speed and force which

nothing could resist; and striking the stem of the foremost vessel,

crushed her beneath their keel. From the huge whirlpool which the

sinking wreck occasioned, arose a shriek so loud and shrill - the

death-cry of a hundred drowning creatures, blended into one fierce

yell - that it rung far above the war-cry of the elements, and echoed,

and re-echoed till it seemed to pierce air, sky, and ocean. But what

was that - that old gray head that rose above the water's surface, and

with looks of agony, and screams for aid, buffeted with the waves! One

look, and he had sprung from the vessel's side, and with vigorous

strokes was swimming towards it. He reached it; he was close upon it.

They were HIS features. The old man saw him coming, and vainly

strove to elude his grasp. But he clasped him tight, and dragged him

beneath the water. Down, down with him, fifty fathoms down; his

struggles grew fainter and fainter, until they wholly ceased. He was

dead; he had killed him, and had kept his oath.

'He was traversing the scorching sands of a mighty desert, barefoot

and alone. The sand choked and blinded him; its fine thin grains

entered the very pores of his skin, and irritated him almost to

madness. Gigantic masses of the same material, carried forward by

the wind, and shone through by the burning sun, stalked in the

distance like pillars of living fire. The bones of men, who had perished

in the dreary waste, lay scattered at his feet; a fearful light fell on

everything around; so far as the eye could reach, nothing but objects

of dread and horror presented themselves. Vainly striving to utter a

The Pickwick Papers