Three Ghost Stories NT, books in English
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Three Ghost Stories
Charles Dickens
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Three Ghost Stories
THE SIGNAL-MAN
‘Halloa! Below there!’
When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was
standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand,
furled round its short pole. One would have thought,
considering the nature of the ground, that he could not
have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but
instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the
steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself
about, and looked down the Line. There was something
remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not
have said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable
enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was
foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench,
and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of
an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand
before I saw him at all.
‘Halloa! Below!’
From looking down the Line, he turned himself about
again, and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
‘Is there any path by which I can come down and speak
to you?’
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He looked up at me without replying, and I looked
down at him without pressing him too soon with a
repetition of my idle question. Just then there came a
vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into
a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me
to start back, as though it had force to draw me down.
When such vapour as rose to my height from this rapid
train had passed me, and was skimming away over the
landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the
flag he had shown while the train went by.
I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he
seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned
with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some
two or three hundred yards distant. I called down to him,
‘All right!’ and made for that point. There, by dint of
looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag
descending path notched out, which I followed.
The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually
precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone, that
became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these
reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to
recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with
which he had pointed out the path.
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When I came down low enough upon the zigzag
descent to see him again, I saw that he was standing
between the rails on the way by which the train had lately
passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to
appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left
elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. His
attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that
I stopped a moment, wondering at it.
I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon
the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw
that he was a dark sallow man, with a dark beard and
rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and
dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet
wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky;
the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of
this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other
direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the
gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive
architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and
forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this
spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold
wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I
had left the natural world.
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Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have
touched him. Not even then removing his eyes from
mine, he stepped back one step, and lifted his hand.
This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had
riveted my attention when I looked down from up
yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an
unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man
who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and
who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest
in these great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but
I am far from sure of the terms I used; for, besides that I
am not happy in opening any conversation, there was
something in the man that daunted me.
He directed a most curious look towards the red light
near the tunnel’s mouth, and looked all about it, as if
something were missing from it, and then looked it me.
That light was part of his charge? Was it not?
He answered in a low voice,—‘Don’t you know it is?’
The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I
perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was
a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since, whether there
may have been infection in his mind.
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