The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, by
Charles Dickens

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Title: The Perils of Certain English Prisoners

Author: Charles Dickens

Release Date: April 3, 2005 [eBook #1406]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH
PRISONERS***

Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories" edition by
David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH PRISONERS

CHAPTER I--THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE

It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-four,
that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour to be a
private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks of the
armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South American waters off the
Mosquito shore.

My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such
christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name
given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was Gilbert. She is
certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a foundling child,
picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my christian-name
to be Gill. It is true that I was called Gills when employed at
Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and Maidstone to frighten birds; but
that had nothing to do with the Baptism wherein I was made, &c., and
wherein a number of things were promised for me by somebody, who let me
alone ever afterwards as to performing any of them, and who, I consider,
must have been the Beadle. Such name of Gills was entirely owing to my
cheeks, or gills, which at that time of my life were of a raspy
description.

My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly in
her old way and waving the feather of her pen at me. That action on her
part, calls to my mind as I look at her hand with the rings on it--Well!
I won't! To be sure it will come in, in its own place. But it's always
strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, and noticing it (as I have done,
you know, so many times) a-fondling children and grandchildren asleep, to
think