But nothing had dimmed Mr. Peggotty's love. Wretched as she was, he caught her in his arms, held her to his breast as he had done so often when she was a child, and told her she was still his own little Em'ly, just as she had always been.
She was ill, but he nursed her back to health. Then he went to Yarmouth to fetch Mrs. Gummidge, and they and the little Em'ly that had been found took passage for Australia, where they might forget the dark past and find happiness in a new life.
But before they sailed fate had brought to naught the villainous plot that had been woven by Uriah Heep about Agnes and her father. And the one whom they had most to thank for this was Mr. Micawber.
Heep had met Mr. Micawber once, when the latter, as usual, was in money difficulties, and, thinking to make a tool of him, had hired him for his clerk. Little by little Heep had then got the other into his debt, till Mr. Micawber saw no prospect before him but the debtors' prison.
Threatening him with this, Heep tried to compel him to do various bits of dirty and dishonest work, at which the other's soul revolted until at length he made up his mind to expose his employer. So, pretending obedience, Mr. Micawber wormed himself into all of the sneaking Heep's affairs, found out the evidence of his guilt, and finally taking all the books and papers from the office safe, sent for David and his friend Tommy Traddles and told them all he had discovered. They found it was by forgery that Heep had got Agnes's father into his power in the first place, and that among others whom he had robbed was David's aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, whose fortune he had stolen.
David and Tommy Traddles sent for Miss Betsy and for Agnes and her father, and they faced Uriah all together. He tried to brazen it out, but when he saw the empty safe he knew that all was known. They told him the only way he could save himself from prison was by giving back the business to Agnes's father, just as it had been years before, when David had lived there, and by restoring to Miss Betsy Trotwood every cent he had robbed her of. This he did with no very good grace and with an especial curse for David, whom he seemed to blame for it all.
In reward for Mr. Micawber's good services, Miss Betsy and Agnes's father paid off all his debts and gave him money enough to take him and his family to Australia. They sailed in the same vessel that carried Mr. Peggotty and little Em'ly.
Before it sailed little Em'ly had written a letter to Ham, whose promised wife she had been before she ran away with Steerforth, begging his forgiveness, and this letter she had asked David to give him after they had gone. Accordingly one day he went to Yarmouth to do this.
That night a terrible storm arose. The wind was so strong that it uprooted trees and threw down chimneys and rolled waves mountain high on the sand where stood the old deserted house-boat of the Peggottys. Next morning David was awakened with the news that a Spanish ship had gone ashore and was fast going to pieces, and he ran to the beach, where all the town was gathered.
He could see the doomed vessel plainly where the surf broke over her. Her masts had snapped short off and at every wave she rolled and beat the sand as if she would pound herself to fragments. Several figures were clinging to the broken masts, and one by one the waves beat them off, and they went down for ever.