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1The Mail It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom
2this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. He
3walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least
4relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail,
5were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the
6road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in
7combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that
8some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty. With drooping heads
9and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they
10were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary
11"Wo-ho! so-ho-then!" the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like an unusually emphatic horse,
12denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a
13nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind. There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in
14its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it
15made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an
16unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own
17workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all. Two
18other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the
19cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what
20either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from
21the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short
22notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house
23and ale-house could produce somebody in "the Captain's" pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable
24non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday
25night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own
26particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a
27loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass. The Dover
28mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and
29the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he
30could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey. "Wo-ho!"
31said the coachman. "So, then! One more pull and you're at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to
32get you to it!--Joe!" "Halloa!" the guard replied. "What o'clock do you make it, Joe?" "Ten minutes, good, past eleven."
33"My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!" The emphatic
34horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses
35followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its
36side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the
37hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a
38fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman. The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The
39horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to
40let the passengers in. "Tst! Joe!" cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his box. "What do you say,
41Tom?" They both listened. "I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe." "I say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the
42guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. "Gentlemen! In the king's name, all of you!" With
43this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive. The passenger booked by this history,
44was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on
45the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to
46the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and
47even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting. The stillness consequent on the
48cessation of the rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed.
49The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The
50hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive
51of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation. The sound of a horse at
52a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill. "So-ho!" the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. "Yo there! Stand! I
53shall fire!" The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man's voice called from the
54mist, "Is that the Dover mail?" "Never you mind what it is!" the guard retorted. "What are you?" "Is that the Dover
55mail?" "Why do you want to know?" "I want a passenger, if it is." "What passenger?" "Mr. Jarvis Lorry." Our booked
56passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him
57distrustfully. "Keep where you are," the guard called to the voice in the mist, "because, if I should make a mistake, it
58could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight." "What is the matter?" asked
59the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. "Who wants me? Is it Jerry?" ("I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is
60Jerry," growled the guard to himself. "He's hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.") "Yes, Mr. Lorry." "What is the matter?"
61"A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co." "I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down
62into the road--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled
63into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. "He may come close; there's nothing wrong." "I hope there
64ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. "Hallo you!" "Well! And hallo
65you!" said Jerry, more hoarsely than before. "Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've got holsters to that
66saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it
67takes the form of Lead. So now let's look at you." The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying
68mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the
69guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered
70with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.
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