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Text Illustrated: Quilp's Nemesis is a Violent End

As the word passed his lips, he staggered and fell — and next moment was fighting with the cold dark water!

For all its bubbling up and rushing in his ears, he could hear the knocking at the gate again — could hear a shout that followed it — could recognise the voice. For all his struggling and plashing, he could understand that they had lost their way, and had wandered back to the point from which they started; that they were all but looking on, while he was drowned; that they were close at hand, but could not make an effort to save him; that he himself had shut and barred them out. He answered the shout — with a yell, which seemed to make the hundred fires that danced before his eyes tremble and flicker, as if a gust of wind had stirred them. It was of no avail. The strong tide filled his throat, and bore him on, upon its rapid current.

It toyed and sported with its ghastly freight, now bruising it against the slimy piles, now hiding it in mud or long rank grass, now dragging it heavily over rough stones and gravel, now feigning to yield it to its own element, and in the same action luring it away, until, tired of the ugly plaything, it flung it on a swamp — a dismal place where pirates had swung in chains through many a wintry night — and left it there to bleach.

And there it lay alone. The sky was red with flame, and the water that bore it there had been tinged with the sullen light as it flowed along. The place the deserted carcass had left so recently, a living man, was now a blazing ruin. There was something of the glare upon its face. The hair, stirred by the damp breeze, played in a kind of mockery of death — such a mockery as the dead man himself would have delighted in when alive — about its head, and its dress fluttered idly in the night wind. [Chapter LXVII, 506]

Related Material about The Old Curiosity Shop

• Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop (homepage)
• The Old Curiosity Shop Illustrated: A Team Effort by "The Clock Works"
• Illustrated Editions of The Old Curiosity Shop
• Kyd's Characters from Dickens (1889)

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. V.

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Created 24 May 2020

Last modified 28 November 2020