"Get out of the way—leave the room, boy—go and play in the garden—you are not wanted here!" Such were hourly the greetings to the child now—no kisses, no caresses as of old. All his sweet childish impulses were crushed or checked, and thrust back upon himself, and distrust and dislike of her, the typical rather than the real stepmother (fortunately for humanity's sake), grew strong in his heart—his little yearning heart, that felt half broken at times by neglect, for he had no one now, save old Patty, to whom he could tell all the wondrous secrets, and deep, tender confidences of child-life.
And even Patty he might not have long, as in Mrs. Hampton's mind she contrasted unfavourably with her own maid; she deemed her gauche, for Patty was a stout, broad, and short-necked woman, with a clumsy gait, a ruddy complexion, red sandy hair, eyes rather green than grey, and with a resolute mouth and chin that came of her Cornish blood.
"Poor little Master Derval, poor darling!" said Patty once to Greville. "She has never said a kind word to him since she came to the house; and look you, sir, he would think she was mocking him if she said one now—yah!" and she ground her teeth.
"Silence, Patty; I cannot permit you to speak thus of Mrs. Hampton," said he angrily.
"Missus Hampton, indeed!" grumbled Patty, but under her breath, however. But one day Greville overheard a remark which gave him a pang.
"Derval, where are you going, sir?" demanded Mrs. Hampton imperiously, as he was taking his little cap.
"To the sea-shore," he answered shyly.
"Again? You are never anywhere else, and always come back with wet and sandy shoes. What takes you there?"
"I like to watch the waves come in, and listen to what they are saying."
"You are a little fool; I say you shall not go!" and seizing him with hands, which we have said were not small ones, she shook him violently, and tears sprang to his eyes.
"Oh," he wailed, "that my own mamma would come out of the ground, and help her little boy!"
"Ah, but your mamma can't," she said spitefully; "she is deep enough down, thank Heaven!"
"Hush, Anne," said Greville, suddenly appearing; "for Heaven's sake don't speak to the child in that manner."
"He aggravates me so!" she replied, colouring; but more with anger than shame.
"Oh, I do beg your pardon," said Derval one day, approaching in great tribulation, with his little hands pressed tremblingly together.
"For what?" she asked sharply.
"Please, I have broken your little china vase."
"The vase that dear Aunt Rookleigh gave me! Oh you clumsy, obnoxious brat!" she exclaimed, while her eyes gleamed with anger; and as no one was near she punished him severely.
"Mother, mother! mamma, mamma!" he cried, panting in her grasp, "oh, come back to your little boy, and save him from this terrible woman!"
"Woman, indeed, you fractious imp; I'll teach you what your mamma, as you call her, never did—manners!" and she continued to beat him till he, and herself, were quite breathless, and then she flung him in a heap into a corner, to sob himself into sullen composure.
In the lust of her cruelty she, by the pursuance of a system all her own, succeeded in actually weaning much of the regard of his father from him, and had him excluded from the dining-room when dessert—to which he had always been admitted—was on the table.
Banishment from dessert seemed to Derval the acme of ill-usage; and, apart from the loss of the good things thereat, he never forgot the day he found himself thus banished.
He had come into the room when he knew "papa was there," and rushed, breathless and laughing, up to his side.
"My chair is not put in for me, papa!" he exclaimed; "why is this?"
Seizing one, he began to drag it across the room towards the table, and to his father's side. Mrs. Hampton looked at him darkly (she was rather an Epicurean and did not like to be worried at meals), and Greville did so silently and uneasily, for he was not unmoved just then by the tender and pleading expression he read in the child's eyes.
"I thought you said, my dear, that we were not to be disturbed in this way by that gauche boy?" said Mrs. Hampton; "and you know the nervous condition to which he reduces me—just now, at least."
"Leave the room, Derval; mamma does not want you to-day."
"Oh, papa, you are not angry with me?"
"Yes—no—but go; you are a bad boy to insist on coming to table."
And so Derval never sat at that table again till the day came when he was to leave the house for ever.
As he was peremptorily forbidden to go near the sea-shore, he frequently went to the churchyard of Finglecombe and spent hours there, weaving chaplets of daisies and wild flowers.
"What brings you here so often, my poor child?" asked Mr. Asperges Laud (patting him on the head) the curate, in his long-tailed coat, gaiters, and Roman collarino.
"To be near mamma's grave," said Derval, gulping down a sob. "Besides, it is a quiet place for a good cry," he added, as the kind curate took him into his little thatched parsonage.
In the dark nights of winter he could recal how tenderly mamma put him to bed, and watched beside him till he slept. It was old Patty Fripp who did so now, who tucked him cosily into his little crib and kissed him some twenty times ere she bade him "good-night," but, by order of Mrs. Hampton, was not permitted to linger beside him.
"The child tells you, ma'm, that he can't sleep in the dark alone, from fear," urged Patty on one occasion.
"Fear of what?" she asked curtly.
"The Long Cripples."
"What do you mean?"
Patty then told her that snakes in Devonshire were called "long cripples," and Derval had heard of the one at Manaton, that was as big as a human body, and had legs as well as wings, and uttered a hiss that could be heard for miles around.
"The boy is a fool, and you are another; leave him to sleep, or wake, as he chooses," was the mandate. So Derval was left to sob himself asleep in the dark, cowering under his coverlet, fearing "the Long Cripple" was coming when the wind moaned in the chimney, or the ivy-leaves pattered on the window-panes.
Apart from the comments of Patty, the remarks of schoolfellows and neighbours were not wanting to foster the growing animosity of Derval to his stepmother. Curious eyes watched him, and the inquisitive questioned him, extracting answers, to which they gave suggestions all calculated to inflame his impotent wrath; and now a day came when the cottage at Finglecombe was turned topsy-turvy, and Derval, to his utter bewilderment, was banished for some time to the parsonage.
The real Lord of Finglecombe had come in the shape of a baby-brother to him—a baby whom the Rev. Asperges Laud made a little Christian by the name of Rookleigh Greville Hampton.
And now, more than ever, as this little one had come, did the father bless his increasing prospects in the acquisition of land, and in the profits thereon, as, like the man in the Canterbury Tales, "therefore loved he gold in special."
New hopes sprang up in the heart of Greville, and with the wealth he seemed likely to acquire, he ceased to regret that which he had lost, and to repine about the title of which his father and grandsire had been, as he believed, illegally deprived.
But in the years to come this baby-brother was fated to have a terrible and calamitous influence upon the destiny of Derval Hampton.
Greville Hampton was so successful in his speculations that he actually hoped, in time, to make quite an estate of Finglecombe. Money makes money, and thus he became a wealthy man; for true it is, "that the thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never in the way we have imagined it."
His dreams of an El Dorado, and Mary's reading thereof, came back to his memory, when he saw house after house being built in the little dell that overlooked the sea; and he recalled her words, "Your riches lie, not in California, but here in Finglecombe." How prophetic were her words!
Now that he was becoming wealthy, many persons who had held somewhat aloof from him began to discover a hundred good qualities in him they had never dreamed of before. Ladies had always admitted that he was a more than ordinarily handsome man; their husbands—county men—praised his seat on horseback, his manner and bearing, remarked the cheerfulness and good nature expressed in his face, and began to extol the great frankness of his manner, though, sooth to say, they saw little of him; for he, remembering how they had ignored his existence in the past, ignored theirs in the present time.
He steadily added acre to acre. A small, but pretty village, approaching the dignity of a watering-place, had sprung up in the lovely dell where the little cottage of Finglecombe stood, for it had now given place to an imposing brick villa, which seemed to look haughtily down on the humbler dwellings around, with its plate-glass oriels, ogee gables, its handsome oaken porch of fanciful design, and its sweeping approaches, rolled and gravelled between beautiful shrubberies.
As wealth flowed in and brought back wonted luxuries with it, he ceased to remember poor Mary's pathetic attempts at a little ornament and refinement amid the humility of her later surroundings, for Greville Hampton became a sorely changed man to all, and to Derval especially.
Could Mary have dreamed that a day would ever come when her child would pine for his father's love, as Derval pined in secret? But under the cruel influence of the second wife and her little boy it was so. Much of this, perhaps, arose from Hampton's absorption in his own pursuits, so fearful was he of losing any time that might add to his increasing store. Thus no word of endearment, of praise for studious conduct, no caress cheered the lonely little boy, who saw all such as his father could spare exacted by Mrs. Hampton for his baby-brother, while her petty tyranny and aversion to himself grew daily together, and a woman so petty, weak-minded, and jealous—jealous even of the dead—found much to inflict in the round of home life.
Once, during a protracted absence of his father—not that his presence perhaps would have mattered much—his little pet dog was taken from him, and sent away he knew not where, and when he wept and clamoured for it, she beat him and pulled his ears till his head ached. On another occasion she deprived him of his canary, as its seed and chickweed "made a mess"; and then he felt—as when she sent "mamma's big Dorking" to the spit—something like murder in his little heart.
He rushed at her and contrived to inflict sundry kicks about her ankles, which made her scream, and in a moment the strong and athletic hand of his father was upon him.
"Ask instant pardon of your mamma, sir!" was the command.
"I won't—she is not my mamma."
"I tell you, sir, she is," and the blows fell like a hailstorm about the head and shoulders of Derval. But not a tear came from his eyes now; his lips were firmly compressed, his face was deadly pale, and he regarded his father with a steady and unflinching eye.
"Go to your room, sir, and remain there till you are sent for."
Under this unjust treatment the boy became sullen and resentful; thus, when a little pool he had constructed in the garden, to hold a shoal of minnows, by her order was emptied and filled up, he revenged himself by poodling her favourite Persian cat, the gift of her aunt, Mrs. Rookleigh, and for this she resolved to inflict condign punishment, with great form and ceremony.
She armed herself with her riding switch (for Greville now kept a pretty pad for her) and desired the groom to bring Master Derval to the stable, and as she did so, in her silly malignity, her very handsome face had a very tiger-like expression, and she grasped the jewelled handle of the switch resolutely in her large white hand.
"Lock the door on the inside," said she when Derval was brought before her. "Off with his jacket and tie up his hands to the knob on that heelpost."
And almost before Derval could realise the situation, he found himself a prisoner, denuded of his jacket, a halter-rope looped round his wrists, and himself "seized up," for deliberate punishment, standing almost on tip-toe, and with considerable tension.
"Will that do, mum?" asked the groom, who thought the situation an amusing one, "a rum start," as he afterwards said in the kitchen, adding that he never thought so "handsome a lady could be so downright savage."
Derval turned his head half round with an appealing expression on his sweet boyish face—a look that reminded her of the expression of Mary's eyes in her banished portrait,—but at that instant she swung the elastic switch round, and it fell with a smart and stinging thud upon his shoulders, which had no protection now save his little shirt. Derval winced, but set his teeth firmly together, determined to die rather than give her the satisfaction of hearing him cry out or supplicate for mercy.
With steady and regular sweep the switch descended on Derval's quivering shoulders again and again; but not a cry escaped him, and enraged anew by his fortitude, or "obstinacy," as she deemed it, Mrs. Hampton exerted herself afresh, and Derval, while clenching his teeth and breathing hard, boy-like, thought of the cruel enchantress who used to whip the bare back of the helpless young king of the Black Isles in the Arabian Nights, and longed for some such punishment to fall on his tormentor as fell on that remarkable lady.
We know not how many strokes were administered, but Mrs. Hampton was becoming somewhat breathless, and the tension of the rope that bound her victim to the heelpost seemed as if dragging his arms out of their sockets.
"Do stop, please mum, the little lad is fainting," exclaimed the groom.
"Nonsense, he is shamming, he is as cunning as a fox!' she exclaimed; but it was as the groom said, for Derval's head drooped on his breast and he hung on the rope like a dead weight, while no motion was made by him.
"Untie him; dear me, I had no idea of this," said Mrs. Hampton, becoming suddenly alarmed, while the groom released the passive hands of Derval, and tenderly carried him into the stable-yard, where the fresh air fanned his face, which was now bathed with cold water from a fountain into which Mrs. Hampton dipped her cambric handkerchief.
"He will revive in a few minutes," said she, becoming certainly still more alarmed at the pallor of his face and seeing that his eyes remained closed.
"Lord, mum," said the groom, who rather enjoyed her growing terror, "I hope we won't be having a crowner's 'quest in the house!"
"Fool!" said she, darting an angry look at the speaker, and then applying her little bottle of aromatic vinegar to Derval's nostrils. He revived, however, rapidly, put his jacket on, and walked sullenly but unsteadily away.
For the first time in her life she feared her husband—was glad of his absence, and hoped that Derval's back, which she anointed when he was sound asleep, would bear no trace of what he had undergone when Greville Hampton returned.
"Flogged like a black nigger for poodling a dirty cat—my eyes!" was the comment of the groom, when relating the episode in the kitchen; and poor old Patty Fripp wept tears of rage when she heard of it.
Derval's back was still stiff and painful, and his tender wrists were excoriated, when his father returned a day or two after, but the idea of complaining about what he had undergone never occurred to him; in fact, he was too much accustomed to systematic ill-usage now.
He longed to be old enough to run away and be a soldier or a sailor—he cared not which—and he would sit by his mother's grave brooding over such thoughts, till led away by Mr. Asperges Laud, or found by Patty Fripp.
As he grew older he became painfully conscious, however, of the different treatment of his younger brother and himself; he saw how he was permitted to go threadbare and shabby, with tattered cap and seamy boots, while little Rookleigh—or Rook as he called him—was kept like a princeling in purple and fine linen, and all the while their father seemed careless or oblivious of the difference.
"I'll not stay here, Patty," said Derval one day in great soreness of heart, while smarting under some new affront; "I'll run away."
"Run away, child, and let the Pixies or the Long Cripple get thee!" exclaimed his old nurse.
But Derval had nearly ceased to fear these things now, and he had no dread of any created thing, though he did shrink from the malice and the severe and vindictive eyes of his stepmother, and from contending with the low forces of her small and narrow mind.
Had Greville Hampton shown more, or even any remarkable preference for his first-born than for little Rookleigh, there might have been some reason for her jealousy though none for her cruelty; but so absorbed was he, as we have said, in the novel and pleasant task of money-making, that he never gave a thought at all to Derval.
As the latter approached boyhood, and Rookleigh childhood from mere infancy, the continued difference in the treatment of both, in food, raiment, and even in toys, was perceptible to all. Derval shunned alike the dining-room and drawing-room, for she was sure to be in either one or other. He lurked in the stable, the gardens, on the sea-shore, anywhere to be away from her, and his father never missed him apparently.
Rookleigh, petted, master, and more than master of the establishment, grew up a froward, petulant, sullen and cunning child—a greedy one too, who ate his cakes and sweetmeats in secrecy and haste, sharing none and nothing with his elder brother or anyone else; and in many ways, as her own peculiar rearing, he was becoming the counterpart of his mother.
Again and again had the latter hinted at sending Derval away somewhere, to hoard or be bound apprentice, she cared not to what; but time passed on, till he attained his fourteenth year, and his half-brother was seven years old, with his mother's chestnut hair and her cunning yellow-hazel eyes, but with a strange shifty expression in them.
At home in his father's house, Derval was beginning to feel homeless now. Though impulsive and enthusiastic, what to him were now the leafy rustle of the woods and apple-orchards of Finglecombe; the trill of the lark above his head, the white-flecked azure of the summer sky, the cornfields ripe for the sickle, the glare of the golden sunshine, the soft curve of the distant hills, the bold rocky coast of Devon, and the sea that lapped it?
He only longed to be far away from them all and from "that woman," for Finglecombe was no longer home to him; no welcome was there, and love had departed.
Often did the boy visit the ruins of the old castle of Oakhampton, and wander there, as he had been wont to do in happier times, when led by his father's hand, longing to be the lord of it, or of some such place—but of it more than all. For he had been told it was theirs by right, and the coat of arms above the mouldering portal, the shield with its three choughs, and the motto Clarior e Tenebris, was theirs also.
The grim stone vaults, the dimly-lighted chamber, the roofless hall, he peopled in imagination with mail-clad soldiers, their pikes glittering and banners waving, as his mind filled with feudal fancies and monastic longings, and he loved the old walls, which had been the cradle of his race, especially when they, and the masses of dark-green ivy that clothed them, were steeped in the redness of the setting sun, and the gathering shadows of evening added to their melancholy, their stillness, and gloom.
He felt his heart swell with romance and pride, as he recalled all his father and even Patty Fripp had told him of the Hamptons of other days, and of the rights he had lost, and bold and daring were the fancies that filled the mind of the brave boy at times, for he was now at the age when all life is illusion.
The sea-shore was his other favourite resort, and he spent hours there listening to the lap, lapping of the waves upon the shingle, and marvelling of other lands that were far, far away; and there was one morning, the excitement of which he never forgot, when a nameless and unknown wreck was found floating in the bay, a mastless and battered hulk—battered by the fury of some great storm, in which the water had contended with the spirits of the air, till all on board had perished.
Another haunt was a ruined and unused mill at Mill-brook, where the old wheel, covered with green moss and grey lichens, looked so picturesque, while the brook foamed and boiled unheeded beneath it, and some ancient trees with drooping branches cast a shadow over the ivied walls, where all, so busy once, was now silent, and made up a picture of which Derval never wearied in his childish rambles, though the pixies were said to grind their corn there at night, when the old wheel, so silent and still by day, was seen revolving furiously in the light of the moon.
Thus, a strange and shadowy expression—induced by his loneliness—began to come into the boy's eyes, as if he had thoughts no one understood, or cared to understand, and as if by day he dreamed of things unthought of by others. Mr. Asperges Laud saw all this in his face, and longed to see the little lad away from Finglecombe and its influence, and the wish was likely to be soon gratified.
At last there comes a crisis in the affairs of Derval Hampton.
"How often am I to urge that this boy of yours should be sent to a boarding school or—to sea, dearest Greville," he heard his step-mother say decisively, but in a suave manner she was cunning enough to adopt with his father, when she had some important end in view, just as he took his seat at a side-table for breakfast to which he had been permanently banished, while little Rookleigh perched in a baby-chair (held in by a cross-bar) sat by his mamma's side and got tiny bits of the best of everything from her own hands.
As her husband made no immediate reply, but sat immersed in the "money article" of the Times, she repeated her observation or suggestion in a louder key, when he said,
"Why, Anne?"
"Because I cannot have him at home here any longer, and what is more, dear Greville, I shall not!"
"You will not?" said he, laying down his paper, while Derval listened with a quick-beating heart.
"Once and for all—no."
"I ask again, why?"
"He is so unfinished—worse—unmannerly—a mere Devonshire lout, I am sorry to say, and will corrupt my darling little Rookleigh if they grow up together."
"Say ours, Anne."
"Well, ours, of course, darling."
"I cannot see that poor Derval is all you say."
"But I do, and to sea let him go; we can't have him growing up to manhood an idle, hulking fellow here."
"Everyone thinks Derval a very well-bred boy, and Mr. Asperges says he is the best behaved of all his choir."
"He poodled the cat, however, steals the fruit and the jam, and is so full of tricks and strange eccentric ways, that he should be permanently banished to the kitchen," continued Mrs. Hampton, forgetting her suavity and warming up with her subject; "but here is the very thing we want!" she exclaimed, turning to an advertisement in the Times, as if her eye had only caught it for the first time.
"The Sea.—Introduction given—free of all charge—to one of the oldest ship-owning firms in the city requiring respectable youths on board of three splendid ships just launched, for the West Indian and Colonial trades. Midshipman's uniform worn. Apply, Dugald Curry & Co," &c. "I think you should lose no time in writing, love," she added coaxingly.
"Would you like this, Derval?" asked Greville Hampton, with a little softer cadence in his voice than usual.
Of course he liked it; and a great flush of happiness and longing rose up in his heart, the ideas of the "splendid ship" and "middy's uniform," combined with a young Briton's in-born tastes and visions of the sea—the sea, with its perils, glories, and wonders; of Robinson Crusoe, and lonely isles full of fruits and flowers and coral caves, of gold to find and savages to fight—now filled the whole mind of Derval; and all that the lives of adventurous voyagers and intrepid seamen—all that the stories contained in naval history and the novels of Marryat and others have sown in the souls of our schoolboys, were there to rouse his native enthusiasm.
So the matter was soon accomplished, and a correspondence with Messrs. Dugald Curry & Co. ended in Derval finding himself elected to seek his bread upon the waters as middy on board the good ship Amethyst of London, 700 tons register, Captain Philip Talbot commander, bound for Rio Janeiro.
From this we may fully gather that the once tender husband that loved so well the gentle Mary, and whose whole thought was the future welfare of their only child, was a sorely changed man now, under the influence of another woman and his new surroundings.
With the removal of the picturesque little cottage of Finglecombe and the erection of a florid and pretentious villa in its place, the old life had passed away, and with it many a memory of the innocent and loving, if anxious, past. Greville Hampton had become almost callous in his worldliness; a slave to chance impulses, to gratified avarice, to feverish acquisitiveness, and the love that had whilom been absorbed by the son of Mary, was now shared, and more than shared, yea, usurped, by the younger born of Anne Rookleigh.
Derval, whom he was sending forth into the cold and bitter world so early in life, in his tender years, as a poor sailor boy, was the same son for whom, in the days of his more limited means, he had longed for wealth, and now—now when wealth was coming upon him—he could look on Anne's face, and into her false eyes of golden hazel, and thrust back the thoughts that at times reproached him.
Could it really be that he—Greville Hampton—was doing this without a necessity therefor? But true it is, that "one's memory is apt to grow rusty with respect to one's old self, and we nearly always look upon ourselves as the products of certain causes, setting down anything unsatisfactory to the charge of training and circumstances." Yet, as in every parting there is an image of death, in the departure of Derval it seemed for a time to Greville Hampton as if Mary was dying again.
The day before he was to leave, Derval went alone to her grave, to read again the words—how well he knew them!—on the little cross at the head of the dear mound, and to take farewell of her, as it were—that turfy mound, to him the most hallowed spot on earth, yea, hallowed as that on which the Angel of God once alighted; and waves of feeling seemed to swell painfully up in his little heart as he turned slowly to leave the spot, for years—perhaps for ever.
Often in the lonely watches of the night, under the glory of the southern skies, or in dark and stormy hours, when the bleak wind blustered aloft and bellied out the close-reefed topsails, when giant waves came thundering from windward to wash the deck and gorge the lee-scuppers, making the stout ship reel like a toy in the perilous trough of the sea, did the sailor boy's thoughts fly back to that peaceful grave and his farewell visit there.
And now the last night came that Derval was to spend under the roof of his father, and for a time the heart of the latter really did go forth to him; the present wife was almost forgotten; dead Mary came back to his soul, and seemed to take her place again. Fain would he have gone with his boy to London, to have seen him off, or into safe hands on board his future home; but Mrs. Hampton said no—she could not and would not be left alone just then.
How tenderly old Patty wept over her "darling's things," and folded them carefully and neatly for the last time, and packed his little portmanteau, yearningly as his own mother would have done, and thought truly, with a great sob, that had she lived he would not now have been "going into the world as a sailor boy." And for that dead mother's sake she kissed him many times, and with her old scissors snipped off a lock of his once golden curls, that were gradually turning to rich dark brown like his father's; but Derval had the crisp hair that indicates character, firmness, and decision of purpose. As he was to depart in the early morning, he kissed and hung over his brother, "little Rook," as he called him, whom he was not permitted to waken; and the episode of the lonely boy doing this moved the heart of his father; but Mrs. Hampton looked coldly on, for hers was hard as flint to him and cold as iron.
At last it was all over, and in the early hours of the next morning he found himself, as one in a dream, in the train for London, and leaving fast behind every feature of the landscape with which he had been familiar from infancy. Already Finglecombe, with all its groves and little church tower had vanished, and now Bideford, with its wide and airy streets that shelve towards the water, came and went as the train swept on, and after that, all his wistful eyes looked on was new to him.
It was an inauspicious morning on which to begin the world, being a dull and raw one in February; the rain fell aslant the grey sky, and reedy fens and lonesome marshes, where the bittern boomed, were full of water, and the rooks were cawing in the leafless elms as they built their nests. The orchards were leafless, and the furrows in the ploughed fields were like long narrow runnels filled with water; but despite all this, the novelty of Derval's situation, a certain sense of freedom, and being the lord of his own proper person, kept up his spirits for a time.
The last hand in which his hand had lingered was that of Mr. Asperges Laud, and in fancy he seemed still to see his kind and earnest face, his Roman collarino, broad hat, and long-skirted coat, as he stood on the platform and gave a farewell wave, like a wafted blessing, after the departing train.
The railway journey was precisely like any other; he saw many places new to him, Taunton, with all its pleasant villages and beautiful orchards, and Salisbury with its wonderful spire, among others, and after a run of two hundred and twenty miles his train ran clanking into Waterloo Station. After traversing miles of streets (which he thought would never come to an end), about ten at night, and with a heart beating almost painfully with excitement, young Derval found himself in the mighty wilderness of London, and surrounded by more people than he thought the world contained, and an appalling bustle, strange lights and sights and sounds, and where all men seemed to be engaged in a race with time and for bare existence.
By the guard who had him in charge he was taken to an hotel; excitement rendered him incapable of eating, and weary with intense thinking he went supperless to bed. Sooth to say, he felt very friendless and miserable. He dearly loved his father, despite his later abstraction and coldness, and already he was longing to see his face again, and the face, too, of Patty Fripp, who had been a mother to him. He had left home but that morning, and already ages seemed to have lapsed since then.
The thoughts of Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cook, Peter Simple, and so forth, failed now to keep up his spirits in the unutterable loneliness of his condition; already he wept for the home he had so lately quitted and loathed, and from which he had been literally driven; but he had no anger at any one there now—not even Mrs. Hampton; and folding his hands, he repeated the prayers, from which mockery was soon to make him refrain when on board the good ship Amethyst.
George Eliot says truly that "daylight changes the aspect of misery to us, as of everything else, for the night presses on our imagination—the forms it takes are false, fitful, exaggerated; in broad day it sickens our sense with the dreary persistence of measurable reality."
The day that dawned was scarcely one calculated to rouse the ardour or spirits even of a lad, as it was one of the Cimmerian darkness, a London fog, when the omnibuses ceased to ply, and not even the boldest cabby would undertake to convey Derval to the West India Docks, a state of things which greatly perplexed him, as the yellow opaqueness that now surrounded him was so different from the thin white mists that came at times from the Bristol Channel.
It was one of those horrible fogs peculiar to London and to London only, when there is a doubly blinding nature in it, which puts the thrust-down smoke into a state of atmospheric solution, obscuring all things, and causes the oppressed eyes to tingle, smart, and fill with irrepressible tears, and blinds them to the dim objects that might perchance otherwise be visible; that compels at midday, and often all day long, a vast consumption of candles and lamp oil, gas and torches, and nearly all locomotion is brought to a standstill; when the trees and railings become white as if snowed upon, carriages are relinquished and links and lanterns resorted to at the West End, and the street perils of the East are fearfully increased, and many a vehicle is found half-wrecked by the kerb-stone; and when the terrible poisonous smoke-fog in its descent from the very sky, as it were, penetrates houses, and makes dark and obscure, damp and comfortless, even the cosiest and brightest of rooms.
The mind is usually affected by external circumstances. Thus, never more than now in this dark and apparently awful day, did Derval, cowering in the corner of a coffee-room, sigh in heart for the touch of the loving hand and the sound of the caressing voice that the grave had closed over for ever.
At last, as evening drew near, the tiresome fog lifted a little, and a cab was brought for him. To Derval's timidly expressed "hope that he knew the way," the bloated visage of the Jehu of the "four-wheeler" responded by a smile of half amusement, half contempt; and to the inquiry if the fog was often like this, he was told that it was "ever so, from year's end to year's end."
After traversing a mighty labyrinth of streets, narrow, dirty, and of most repellent aspect, the cabman drew up, descended, and opened the door; though aware that he had to deal with "a precious green 'un," he was actually content with thrice his legal fare, and depositing Derval at a gate of the Dock—a wilderness of kegs, masts, and ships, and all manner of strange things to him—left him with his portmanteau to find out the Amethyst—his future home—as best he could.
By the assistance of a good-natured porter, after great delay and trouble, he found her, and by a gangway proceeded on board in the mist and damp, unnoticed and bewildered to whom to address himself.
A prodigious noise and bustle prevailed everywhere, but to Derval's excited imagination they seemed to culminate on board the Amethyst. Several black gaping hatches were open, and a mighty multitude of casks, boxes, bales, and filled sacks, were descending into them, by ropes and chain run through the blocks shipped on derricks (in spars supported by stays, and used for slinging up or lowering down goods), with a terrible creaking and rattling, amid much expenditure of breath in the way of "yo-heave-oing" by gangs of peculiarly dirty-looking fellows, with jersey-sleeves rolled up, and who looked like gipsies or vagrants, but were simply unwashed and unkempt dock-labourers and porters.
The deck and the entire ship seemed, to lad's unprofessional eyes, a mass of irremediable confusion. The former was encumbered with casks and cases, and the mud brought from the shore by the feet of dock-people and visitors had not added to its comfort or cleanness. Everybody seemed bustling about, with some distinct object in view; but Derval stood aside with his little portmanteau and a travelling-bag, pushed to and fro by every passer, lost, bewildered, and not unfrequently sworn at.
At last he took courage to address a young man, tall, surly, and saucy in aspect, who was smoking a short pipe, but who wore a naval cap, and though he had his shirt-sleeves rolled up as if he had been at work, seemed in some authority, for Derval heard him spoken of as the third mate, and he was greatly shocked to find such an official attired thus, while superintending cargo going into the open hold.
"Please, sir," said Derval, "I have come to join the ship as a midshipman—where shall I put these things of mine?"
"Don't chuck them down here, youngster, whatever you do," was the somewhat surly response, while he gave Derval a casual yet critical glance. "You are young—young—what the devil is your name?"
"Derval Hampton, sir."
"Oh, ah—yes," replied the other, touching the peak of his cap in mockery, and for a moment taking his short pipe from his mouth. "I am Paul Bitts, the third mate; we have been looking for you for ever so long; you'll excuse the ship not being decorated to receive you."
"Certainly, sir."
"That is very good of you. I hope you left your esteemed papa and mamma very well?"
"Very well, thank you."
"A very greenhorn, by Jove!" muttered this would-be witty young gentleman. "Is your wife coming to see you off? I hope not, as I can't stand women's tears—lovely woman in distress and all that sort of thing."
"Who's this?" asked a smart-looking seaman with a fringe of curly brown whiskers, and a good-natured face—a man about forty-five—as he came forward. The new-comer had the cut of a genuine seaman, and wore his clothes as no landsman could ever wear them. His trousers were loose and round at the feet but tight at the waist; he wore a well-varnished and low-crowned black hat, with a long blue ribbon hanging over the left eye, a black silk handkerchief peculiarly knotted round his bare brown throat, that had been tanned by the sun of many a land and sea; a jack-knife hanging by a lanyard thread was his only ornament, unless we except a clumsy gold ring, and he displayed a superabundance of check shirt. He had a wide step, a rolling gait, and half-open hands that seemed always ready to tally on to anything. "Who is this?' he repeated, eyeing Derval.
"A greenhorn—a land-crab—come with the owner's compliments," said Mr. Paul Bitts, bowing low ironically; "allow me to introduce Mr. Derval Hampton—Mr. Joe Grummet, our boatswain; Mr. Joe Grummet—Mr. Derval——"
"Stow that 'ere nonsense," said the other bluntly; "welcome aboard, my little lad, and if any man in the Amethyst can make a sailor of you, I am he."
Then Joe Grummet shook Derval's hand very cordially indeed.
"Take him aft to the captain," said Mr. Bitts; "but before you go, youngster, hand over all the cakes and jam-pots the old woman at home gave you."
"I have none, and if I have, why should I give them to you?" asked Derval, beginning to resent the other's offensive tone.
"Because you might be a naughty boy and get so sea-sick—so hand them over, and I'll find fellows to eat them for you."
"I have none, I tell you," replied Derval, with sparkling eyes; "and who do you mean by the 'old woman'?"
"Your mother, of course."
"I have—none!" replied Derval, in a changed voice that Joe Grummet was not slow to detect, and taking up Derval's portmanteau and bag, he desired him to follow, whispering as they went:
"Look 'ee, Hampton lad, there isn't a saucier fellow in the ship than Paul Bitts, but he is senior to you, and you won't gain anything by running foul of his hawse, so give him a wide berth always."
And now, by a very handsome companion-way and mahogany stair, they descended to the cabin of the ship, which was plainly and neatly furnished, the chief features, to Derval's eyes, being a rack or two of arms and a brass tell-tale compass, that swung in the square skylight.
"Mr. Hampton—just come aboard, sir," said Joe Grummet, removing his hat; and Derval found himself kindly welcomed by Captain Talbot, a man about thirty, with a handsome open countenance, a bright cheerful expression, and a stout well-set figure, and his two other mates, Mr. Girtline and Mr. Tyeblock, who pressed him to join them in a glass of sherry and a biscuit, of which they were partaking before going on shore.
Captain Talbot questioned him kindly about his parents and home as if to acquire his confidence and inspire him therewith; about his education, and if he had a genuine liking for the sea, or if it was only a flight of boyish fancy born of story books; but Derval, unable to tell that anywhere was better than home to him, answered with great reserve and much shyness, while sooth to say, as he had never heard of the Royal Naval Reserve, to which Captain Talbot and his two mates belonged, their costumes puzzled him very much.
They wore gold epaulettes, and half-inch gold lace in wavy lines around the cuffs, laced trousers, sword and belts like naval officers, Captain Talbot having two medals glittering on his broad chest for saving human life; and he and his two mates were now departing in "full fig," as Joe Grummet informed him, to a great entertainment given by the Lord Mayor, and ere they left the ship, the captain, who knew probably the proclivities of Mr. Paul Bitts, who was left in charge there, specially directed the boatswain to have an eye to the comforts of the new-comer.
So while showing him his berth and where to stow his things, Joe solved to him the mystery of the handsome uniforms, and fired his enthusiasm thereby. He told him that no less a personage than the Prince of Wales was at the head of the Royal Naval Reserve; that Captain Talbot had the rank of Lieutenant there, and Mr. Girtline and Mr. Tyeblock that of sub-lieutenants among the officers, who among their number included several marquises and lords, as the Navy List showed; and that in consequence of the Amethyst having among her crew, which consisted of twenty-five all told (exclusive of officers), ten seamen of the Royal Naval Reserve (of whom he, Joe, was one), she was entitled to carry at her gaff-peak, the blue ensign of Her Majesty's fleet, prior to first hoisting of which, she was duly provided with an Admiralty warrant.
The uniform which he had now unpacked and the contemplation of six brass 9-pounders on deck, polished like jeweller's gold, with black tompions in their muzzles and canvas-covered lashings white as snow, afforded Derval as much delight as the rifles with sword-bayonets, the cutlasses and pistols that were racked round the mizenmast in the cabin and against the rudder case; for in the seas the Amethyst might have to traverse, were risks to be run that rendered lethal weapons necessary at times; and he longed, with all an enthusiastic lad's longing, for the day when he, like Joe Grummet and the rest, would be qualified to have his turn of drill and gunnery practice on board H.M.S. President in the West India Docks. And he hoped too, that in time to come he might be captain of just such another fine and stately ship as the Amethyst of 700 tons register, A.1 at Lloyds, perfect in the grace of her rigging, beautiful in mould, and made for fast sailing—for slipping through the sea "a-head of her reckoning."
Her rigging was beautifully fitted, every rope lying in the chafe of another, her decks were flush and level, and when at sea any loose rope was neatly coiled away and laid down in a regular man-of-war fashion that came of the recent training of Joe Grummet and others on board H.M.S. President.
"The skipper has specially requested me to take you in tow, Mr. Hampton," said the boatswain.
"In tow?" queried Derval.
"In charge, don't you know; so there is one piece of advice I'll give you, keep to windward if you can of Mr. Paul Bitts; he is often crank, and over-fond of colting the youngster, and who yaws a bit in way of doing duty."
To this mysteriously worded advice, Derval replied that he should endeavour to please that gentleman in all things.
"The captain, of course, will take care that you are not put upon, but then he is not always at hand. He is a fine fellow, Phil Talbot, who can crack his joke and his biscuit on the same head," continued the boatswain manipulating a quid between the hard palms of his hands prior to inserting it in the back recesses of his mouth. "Many a lunar he and I have worked together when mere ship-boys long ago—for there wer'nt no middies—no reefers—in the merchant service in those days, and many who sailed with us then have gone aloft for ever. But come lad—supper waits," he exclaimed as a bell was heard to jingle; "a jolly British leg of mutton with caper sauce—gad boy, I have eaten capers off the bushes many a time on the shore of the Black Sea."
At supper were Dr. Strang, the young Scotch surgeon, who in despair of a practice ashore was fain to ship as a "medico" in the Amethyst; and two middies, Harry or Hal Bowline, a frank fair-haired and cherry-cheeked young fellow with a confident and often defiant air; and little Tommy Titford,—usually called Tom Tit—a quiet, dark-eyed, and gentle lad about Derval's age, and who was the peculiar object of the malevolence of Mr. Paul Bitts, then busily engaged in slicing down the mutton, of which he reserved all the best cuts for himself.
He gruffly told Derval to make haste and finish his supper, as he had a message for him to execute; and Derval, anxious to make himself useful, and also to conciliate this personage, bolted his food, and nearly choked himself with a can of ale handed to him by the good-natured boatswain.
"Got any sisters, Hampton?" asked Bowline, who thought himself a wag.
"No," replied Derval.
"Sorry for that; because we would have stuck their photos all over the place, and set them up to auction now and then."
"Your message, please sir?" said Derval.
"The harbour watch is set, so go forward and send the cook's shifter to me."
"Where shall I find him?"
"In the starboard binnacle."
"Very good, sir." And Derval vanished.
"He is as big a gull as ever picked up a bit of biscuit!" said Bitts with a horse-laugh in which the others joined, especially young Bowline, and after some time Derval returned looking rather tired, flushed, and confused, to say he had been all over the ship, inquired of everyone, and could find neither the person nor the place referred to, at which there was a fresh burst of laughter; for by some he had been informed that the cook's shifter had gone on shore to be married, by others that he was busy polishing the chain cable, and that the starboard binnacle was at present in the captain's hat-box, and so forth.
Many similar, and many silly jokes against which the boatswain failed to protect him, and perhaps was not disinclined to join in, were perpetrated on Derval, ere, thoroughly weary with a long and, to him, exciting day, he retired to his berth, which he thought had a moist and musty odour, and certainly its sheets had not the dried lavender and camphor scents of Patty Fripp's store presses at Finglecombe.
Betimes came the morrow with its troubles, and the tyranny of Mr. Bitts among them.
"Come youngster, tumble up," shouted that individual, "it is six bells."
"What have bells to do with me, sir?" asked Derval timidly.
"By Jingo, I'll soon let you know, through the medium of a good colt. Rouse—that is all!"
Now that gentleman was in charge of the deck, and when Derval came upon it, at 6 A.M., Bitts was again in his shirt-sleeves, and still superintending the stowage of cargo, swearing at the dock labourers, until the appearance of Derval gave a turn to his thoughts.
"On deck at last, Hampton. By Jove, you look as if you had been cooked and stewed up again!" he exclaimed; "now, away aloft and get the fresh air about you. The sooner you learn to sit astride the main cross-trees, the better for yourself."
And to Derval's dismay the speaker indicated two little spars, that looked as slender as walking-canes, resting on the trestle-trees, where the topmast and topgallantmast are connected.
"Please, sir, I cannot do that just yet," urged Derval, turning very white.
"Into the maintop then," continued the bully; "away aloft youngster, and hold on with your eyelids if your hands fail you. By Jove, you'll soon find that you are like a young bear, with all your sorrows to come! Here you, Tom Tit, show this son of a shotten herring how to mount the rigging."
In obedience to these orders the boys began to ascend the main rattlins at once, little Titford leading the way and saying many pleasant things to give Derval courage and confidence.
"Not through the lubber's hole," shouted Paul Bitts; "up by the futtock shrouds!"
Derval knew well that the sooner he mastered all this kind of work the better for himself. He had climbed many a tall elm when seeking rooks' eggs at Finglecombe, and many a taller cliff when after those of the cormorants, choughs, and gannets; but this was very different work, even though the ship, moored beside the quay, was motionless as St. Pauls; and he thought of what this task would be at sea, in a storm perhaps, when the ship became the fulcrum of the swaying masts, and his heart stood still at the terrible anticipation; yet he mounted bravely up, step for step with young Titford, encouraged by the latter's voice, and the clapping of hard horny palms below.
But now they had reached the top of the long shrouds, to where the futtock-shrouds come down from the top and are bound to the mast by a hoop of iron.
"Up you go now—if you go through the lubber's hole, I'll be the death of you!" cried Bitts from below, for as the captain and other two mates were still on shore, he was in all the plenitude of his power.
"Hold on fast and follow me," cried little Titford, and active as a squirrel, with his body bent backward at an angle of forty-five from the mast, he continued mounting until he found himself in the maintop—i.e. the platform placed over the head of the lower must.
Panting, and perspiring at every pore, with agitation, exertion, and an emotion of no small dismay to see the deck and the men thereon seem so small and so far down below, Derval, with tingling fingers, while a prayer rose to his lips, grasped the futtock-shrouds, surmounted them as one in a dream, and found himself safe beside Titford. There came a time when this task was as easy to him as sitting down to table, but the novelty of it filled him with great alarm then, and when the descent began, despite his terror of Mr. Paul Bitts, he deliberately left the top through the lubber's hole—an aperture in the top grating—as an easier mode of progression while Titford went down by the futtock-shrouds.
On seeing this Paul Bitts grinned with delight, and produced from his pocket a colt—a piece of rope eighteen inches long, knotted at one end and whipped at the other—which he was wont to carry for the benefit of the ship-boys.
Derval perceived this; a spirit of mischief, caused by revulsion of feeling, rose within him, and the moment he reached the deck, all encumbered as it was by boxes, barrels, bales, and gangways, dock labourers and porters, he gave Mr. Bitts a chase that excited the laughter of all and roused the fury of that personage, by darting hither and thither, with all a boy's agility, round the masts and hatchways till he reached the quarter-deck, at a part of which the side-netting was being repaired; consequently a portion of it was open and the moulded plankshere (a plank which runs all round the timber heads) was hinged up.
While Derval stood here irresolute, and thinking of capitulation, Bitts made a dart at him, on which the latter instantly shrank aside, and his tormentor, in his blind fury failing to perceive the gap in the bulwark, went head foremost overboard and into the water.
Amid shouts of laughter he came to the surface, black as a negro, with the filthy mud and ooze of the harbour bottom, into which he must have been wedged to the shoulders.
"Oh, my eye!" shouted Harry Bowline, who danced a few steps of a hornpipe, "here's a lark—Bitts in the water—man overboard—rope, rope! cut away the life-buoy—man a boat!"
Puffing like a grampus and half choked, the third mate scrambled on board by the mizen chains, minus his colt, and rather more than crestfallen, and while he went below to alter his costume, Derval, after paying his "footing" to the crew—their perquisites for his first going aloft—was sent into a part of the hold where a gang of men were stowing away cases, and where, as it was very dark, his duty consisted in holding a candle to show a light when required.
In an atmosphere and amid features and occupations so new and strange, perhaps Derval thought as little now of the Oakhampton title, the ruined castle, and Wistmanswood, as his father did amid his fast growing wealth; but the time might come for both to lay such matters to heart, and this the future will show.
It was somewhat of a red-letter day for Derval when he first donned his uniform—a gold-laced cap and blue Oxford jacket with gilt anchor buttons, gold anchors on the collars, and ditto lace upon the cuffs—and went on shore, bearer of a letter to Messrs. Dugald Curry & Co., and feeling indifferent to the anxious inquiries of Mr. Bitts, as to whether he thought he resembled Lord Nelson, K.C.B., whether his mamma knew he was absent from home, and at what church he was to meet his intended, and much more to the same purpose.
In time the cargo was all on board, the hatches battened down, the boats secured and inspected, the bills of lading signed—documents whereby the captain of a vessel acknowledges receipt of goods shipped on board, and binds himself ("dangers of accidents, the seas, fire, enemies, &c., excepted") to deliver them in good order to those to whom they are addressed, on payment of the stipulated freight.
The Amethyst was hauled out of dock, and with the blue ensign of the Royal Naval Reserve flying at her gaff-peak, and Blue Peter at the foremast-head, was taken by tug down the river, and came to anchor off Tilbury Fort. Next day began the bustle of preparing for sea; the canvas was fully bent, the royal yards crossed, the studding sail gear rove, the powder brought on board; and in many ways Derval made himself so active, even up aloft, that he quite won the heart of Joe Grummet.
"I knew you would drop into your place in a day or two, youngster," said he, "and you've already done it."
"When shall we reach the ocean?"
"Oh, very soon—a deuced deal too soon for you," said Mr. Bitts.
"To-morrow a tug will take us to the Nore, and next day will find us in the Channel—and here comes old Toggle the Pilot," said Grummet, as a stout personage, enveloped in many coats and wraps, came tumbling over the side, with a rubicund and weatherbeaten face, and made his way direct for the grog, which as a preliminary to everything, waited him, as he knew, in the cabin.
It is not an uncommon thing for the captain of a sea-going ship, calling the roll, to find several of his men absent, having been either too intoxicated to sail, or having broken their articles and disappeared, and such deficiencies are then made up by the crimps at Gravesend, as no vessel can go to sea short-handed; but this was never the case with Phil Talbot, who was one of the most popular merchant commanders belonging to the mighty Port of London.
Ere long the Nore was left behind, and Derval had his first instalment of the odious mal-du-mer amid the heavy seas of the English Channel, and with a longing and somewhat of an envious heart, he saw old Toggle the Pilot quit the ship and go off to Deal in his boat, waving a farewell with his tarpaulin hat—the last link with old England.
Even the glorious sea is becoming somewhat prosaic now in these our days of steam, telegraphy, and extreme colonisation; yet it was the fortune of Derval Hampton to see much that was stirring, perilous and even terrible, ere he had the down of manhood on his upper lip.
The family at Finglecombe knew that the Amethyst, had sailed for Rio de Janeiro. Greville Hampton, who was neither destitute of humanity nor of natural interest in his first-born, duly announced the fact, as seen among the "Shipping Intelligence" in his morning paper, and it set Mrs. Hampton thinking—thinking—as she fondled her rather cross-tempered little Rookleigh.
She thought on the contingencies consequent to a sailor's life, separated from death by a six-inch plank, as Juvenal has it—an idea reproduced by Dr. Samuel Johnson—the collisions, fires, founderings, the chances of lee-shores, of floating hulls and icebergs in the dark; the countless chances too of drowning or dying by climate and disease. She had read too in the papers that "in the five years ending June last, 5,028 ships had gone to the bottom with every man on board, making 6,469 souls," and she thought there were a good many chances against Derval Hampton—the eldest born—ever darkening his father's door again.
But there was one chance, or mischance rather, on which she had not calculated, and which startled the soul of Greville to its inmost depth, when he read on another morning a paragraph worded thus:—
"The ship Amethyst of London, outward bound, spoken with in Latitude 13° 17' S. and Longitude 33° 27' W., by Curry & Co.'s ship Wanderer, all well, save that a death had happened. A boy had fallen from aloft and perished."
* * * * *
The voyage of the Amethyst towards tropical seas and shores was far from monotonous, and more than one startling event occurred during its progress. With her snowy canvas spread, her rigging all a-taut (to use a cant nautical phrase), and her deck, whilom so wet, slippery, and foul in dock, well holystoned and swabbed till it was—as Joe Grummet said—white as a lady's hand, the Amethyst was in all her beauty now—all the more so to Derval, who got rid of his sea-sickness ere she cleared the Channel.
"Well, my little man," said Captain Talbot one day, when Joe Grummet was teaching him the use of the quadrant, "how do you feel on your sea legs—eh?"
"Happy, sir—very happy," replied Derval, turning his bright young face, which was flushed by the keen breeze, laden by the iodine of many thousand miles of the fresh, glorious, and open ocean.
"That's right, my lad."
"I have not been so happy for many a year past," said Derval, thinking, perhaps, of his mother.
"Come, come, youngster, it is rather early in life for you to talk of many years, and of happiness in the past tense," said the Captain, amused by a quaintness in the manner of Derval—a manner born of the kind of isolation in which he had lived in his father's house; and save for the annoyance occasionally given to him by the wasp-like nature of Paul Bitts, he would have had nothing to complain of, for the good example and gentlemanly bearing of Captain Talbot and the first and second mates, affected all the ship's company advantageously.
As for the self-won ducking in the West India Dock, Derval hoped Mr. Bitts would forget that and get over it in time; but he never did, and in many ways pursued the feud which he had declared, apparently, on the day Derval first joined the ship.
One morning, when he and Derval were in the middle watch (i.e. from 12 to 4 A.M., as the ship was nearing the Azores), the latter, overcome by the heavy saline atmosphere of the sea, by youth and the lateness of the hour, began insensibly to doze, with his head resting on the gunnel of the quarter-deck, and in a kind of half-waking dream he thought himself at Finglecombe: young rabbits scudded past in the grass; the hum of the wind in the rigging aloft, suggested that of bees and insects in the sunshine, and the air seemed to become laden with the familiar fragrance of the apple orchards and garden flowers, till a heavy thwack from the new colt of the inevitable Mr. Paul Bitts awoke him with a nervous start.
"Sleeping are you—on your watch, too! You'll come to the gallows, you young villain!" exclaimed his senior officer, with a malicious gleam in his closely set and serpent-like eyes; "that will teach you to snore like one of Circe's swine. Now go to windward—keep a bright look-out for the revolving light on Cape Flyaway, and if you see the great sea-serpent, don't forget to call the morning watch."
And, with a chuckle, he coiled away the colt in a pocket of his pea-jacket.
"Keep your weather-eye open," he added in a bullying tone; "and don't let me catch you, in the dark, stealing eggs out of the hen-coops!"
"Please, sir," said Derval, rubbing his shoulders, "I never was a thief."
"But thieving begins sometimes, and opportunity is the devil's game."
Under the special tutelage of Joe Grummet, who conceived a great regard for him, Derval, in conjunction with little Tom Titford, learned to hand, reef and steer, to mount away aloft with ease and confidence, and with both to lie out on the arms of a topgallant yard; to use the marling-spike, to splice and knot, and make a grummet. He knew the name of every part of the ship, of every spar and of all the standing and running rigging; for he had great aptitude, and proved a smart scholar at this kind of work; thus, in a little time, it was evident that he would be able to take sights, work a reckoning by log and compass, and calculate variation and leeway. He was taught how to be ready for any emergency of wind or weather; to consider nothing too trivial for consideration, and to remember, as Joe said, "how a little leak may sink a great ship."
Yet his sweet boyish nature still remained; and now, when far away at sea, he thought, in the warmth of his affection, of the handsome pipe he would "bring home for papa"; of the beautiful shells for his little half-brother; and he had visions, too, of a wonderful cap, all over ribbons, for old Patty Fripp.
Overhead the sky was now of the cerulean blue that England never knew, and never will know.
Captain Talbot made his men strictly observe the "clean-shirt-days," as the sailors call Thursday and Sunday; on the latter he always read prayers at the capstan-head to his crew, who were sure to be neatly dressed, and there was much of that silence which prevails in a man-of-war on that day.
On one of these occasions, just after prayers, Mr. Bitts, to Derval's great surprise, approached under the lee of the long-boat, amidship, and said, "Come, youngster—here is a glass of grog for you—just a thimble-full; the sun is over the fore-yard long ago."
Derval shrank from the beverage, which was proffered in a tumbler, but seeing Mr. Bitts' hand in his pocket wherein the colt was coiled, he drank it off, though nearly choked by the effort, and after that, his perceptions of everything were very vague indeed.
The ship seemed to be sailing round and round upon an axis; he tried to speak, but the difficulty of articulation became great, and the half-uttered nonsense he talked hung upon his lips; he felt alternately maudlin and defiant, especially with young Harry Bowline, who greeted him with shouts of laughter, yet good-naturedly endeavoured to get him below, and a struggle ensued between them.
"What is the matter there, forward?" cried the Captain, in surprise, from the quarterdeck.
"Mr. Hampton taken suddenly ill, sir," replied Mr. Bitts with a gratified grin.
"Strang, see what is the matter."
The young Scots doctor went amidships, and returned laughing, to report that which was really the case, "Young Hampton as screwed as an owl!"
"The deuce he is!" exclaimed the Captain with great annoyance; "how came this to pass?"
"The grog as Mr. Bitts gave him has been too strong for him, sir," said Joe Grummet, who took in the whole situation and resented it accordingly; "riglar thumb-grog it must have been, to my mind."
Bitts furtively darted a vicious glance at the boatswain, who received it with perfect equanimity.
"What can that boy know about grog?" said the Captain angrily.
"How to get jolly drunk on it apparently," replied the unabashed Paul Bitts; "he is rather a greenhorn yet."
"Shame on you, sir! this is your fault, not his; and mark me, if it ever happens again, it will be the worse for you and your certificate!"
With this threat, the Captain turned and walked aft.
It may be safely recorded that this never happened again, and Derval, full of shame for the occurrence, did all in his power, by proper and zealous behaviour, to wipe off the stain, for such he deemed it, brought upon him by the malevolence of the third mate.
On the watch by night, under skies where new constellations—new to his eyes at least—were studding heaven, he always felt to the full the awful impressiveness, the utter silence of the sea! Then his thoughts fled home—to that which had latterly been no home to him—and again, in fancy, he saw the lovely dell of Finglecombe, the bay glittering in the sunny distance, the grim rocky portal of the Horses' Hole, the Pixies Parlour, the stately ruins of Oakhampton, the lone waste of Wistmanswood, the cob-cottages, and the old haunted mill at the Mill brook, with its silent and mossy wheel.
What a vast time seemed to have elapsed since he left all these behind him!
One day, when the Amethyst was near the tropic of Cancer, and ploughing the Sargasso Sea, about daybreak, Tom Tyeblock, the second mate, who had the morning watch, reported a sail, with a signal flying on the lee-bow, so the Amethyst was edged down towards her.
She was a large brig, with her sails in considerable disorder. The peak halyards of the spanker gaff had given way, and the sail lay flapping against the mainmast; her spars were topped about in various ways; the maintopsail was full, but the foretopsail lay in the wind; not a soul was to be seen on board, and yet she had signals flying, that said, "Can you send a boat on board?"
When near her, the Amethyst lay to, and Captain Talbot ordered Mr. Bitts to take a brace of revolvers with him and go off to the stranger, with Derval and six men, who hazarded all manner of conjectures as to the vessel.
Had her crew all perished of some terrible disease, or been poisoned by a rascally black cook? If so, terrible sights would await them, of corpses lying about, or festering in bunks and berths. Had there been a mutiny, and had she been scuttled, to sink in time? She did look rather deep in the water, Paul Bitts remarked, adding that she might sink suddenly when they were on board, or alongside, and so carry them down in the vortex she made. Had some dreadful crime compelled her crew to abandon her?
As they neared her, stroke by stroke, the silent, voiceless, and crewless craft, floating in utter silence upon the glassy tropical sea, became an object calculated to impose awe and a solemn sense of great mystery on the boat's crew. At last they were alongside, and as it might have been dangerous to hook on the painter to any part of her, the coxswain held on by boat-hook to the forechains, while with their pulses accelerated by excitement, Paul Bitts and Derval clambered up and leaped on board, the soul of the latter already recoiling within him at anticipation of some sight of horror.
The deck was deserted, but ropes, &c. lay about everywhere in confusion. The longboat was missing, but its chocks remained over the main hatch. The quarter-boat, too, was gone, and the fall-tackles swung idly at the davit-heads.
They descended to the cabin: it was empty; but a fixed lamp was burning on the table, and a clock ticked at the bulkhead; some books, wine-glasses, and a couple of decanters had evidently slipped off the table, and lay in a heap to leeward. A paroquet, in a gilt cage, hung in the skylight. Save this bird, there was no living thing on board.
The cabin berths had not been slept in, and they, as well as the forecastle bunks, were empty. There was no appearance of corpses, no blood, no weapons, or sign of outrage anywhere. No ship's papers could be found, but her name was the Bonnie Jean of ... and the rest was painted out!
After making certain that there was no one on board the derelict, as the weather was becoming squally, and Captain Talbot had a signal flying "to return," Mr. Bitts quitted the brig, and shoved off. Boy-like, Derval had possessed himself of the paroquet—a beautiful little love-bird, half green and scarlet—in its pretty cage, thinking of it as a gift for his little brother at home; but with a malediction, Paul Bitts told him to "let it alone," and as he delayed, he took it out of the cage and tossed it away to leeward, when it soon disappeared.
What could the emergency have been that caused the still flying signal, now answered too late, "Can you send a boat?" to be hoisted, and to what ship had it been exhibited? It could have been to no town or fort in that latitude and longitude. Moreover, the burning lamp showed that the desertion had been most recent. Where, then, were her crew?
Conjectures were endless; a sharp look-out was kept from aloft, but no boats were seen, and as the Amethyst hauled her wind and pursued her course, every eye was turned ever and anon to the floating derelict till she was hull down, and even till her topsails sank beneath the dim and blue horizon astern.