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- 7254
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.842Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7190
- text
- refused, unless I would pay for it. But I had no money. So as my
boarding-house was some way off, and it would be lost time to run to
the ship for my big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I
hurried to one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having seen
running near the scene of a still smoldering fire in an old rag house;
and taking off a new tarpaulin hat, which had been loaned me that day,
filled it with water.
With this, I returned to Launcelott’s-Hey; and with considerable
difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived to descend with
it into the vault; where there was hardly space enough left to let me
stand. The two girls drank out of the hat together; looking up at me
with an unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint. The
woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the girls were breaking
and eating the bread, I tried to lift the woman’s head; but, feeble as
she was, she seemed bent upon holding it down. Observing her arms still
clasped upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under the rags
there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled me forcibly to
withdraw her hands for a moment; when I caught a glimpse of a meager
little babe—the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its
face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes
looked like balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.
The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one of the girls
who they were, and where they lived; but she only stared vacantly,
muttering something that could not be understood.
The air of the place was now getting too much for me; but I stood
deliberating a moment, whether it was possible for me to drag them out
of the vault. But if I did, what then? They would only perish in the
street, and here they were at least protected from the rain; and more
than that, might die in seclusion.
I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them again, almost
repented that I had brought them any food; for it would only tend to
prolong their misery, without hope of any permanent relief: for die
they must very soon; they were too far gone for any medicine to help
them. I hardly know whether I ought to confess another thing that
occurred to me as I stood there; but it was this—I felt an almost
irresistible impulse to do them the last mercy, of in some way putting
an end to their horrible lives; and I should almost have done so, I
think, had I not been deterred by thoughts of the law. For I well knew
that the law, which would let them perish of themselves without giving
them one cup of water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary, in
convicting him who should so much as offer to relieve them from their
miserable existence.
The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three times, and still
met the same sight. The girls leaning up against the woman on each
side, and the woman with her arms still folding the babe, and her head
bowed. The first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped
down in the morning; but the second evening, the bread I had dropped
that morning remained untouched. On the third morning the smell that
came from the vault was such, that I accosted the same policeman I had
accosted before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him that
the persons I had spoken to him about were dead, and he had better have
them removed. He looked as if he did not believe me, and added, that it
was not his street.
When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I entered the
guard-house within the walls, and asked for one of the captains, to
whom I told the story; but, from what he said, was led to infer that
the Dock Police was distinct from that of the town, and this was not
the right place to lodge my information.
- title
- Chunk 3